


arms of darkness

by works of yesterday (DreamyRequiem)



Series: true speed [2]
Category: Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, shadow the hedgehog (game) adapation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22822663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamyRequiem/pseuds/works%20of%20yesterday
Summary: Shadow moved to Westopolis for some peace and quiet. He did not sign up to fight off an invasion of both Gaia and his own mind as a specter from his past forces its way into his current life.The Other doesn't care about the invasion. He just wants some answers for why he exists and if there's any point in forcing himself to live in a world that has no need for him. Shadow existed, after all: What was the point of a defective copy?
Relationships: Miles "Tails" Prower & Shadow the Hedgehog, Shadow the Hedgehog & Sonic the Hedgehog, knuckles the echidna & oc
Series: true speed [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/985356
Comments: 15
Kudos: 38





	1. u; prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta`d
> 
> a short prologue, from our favorite Other Shadow from Heroes....

He peered over the horizon. It was marred by the presence of skyscrapers and other buildings. Westopolis was a decent sized city, he knew, and was primarily a human city. There was a decent sized population of mobians, but it was far less than half.

Why he was drawn here of all place, he didn't know. It was like he was being pulled along like a magnet. He needed an answer.

...Honestly, he needed answers for why he was even here on this planet. He--not Shadow--was some sort of two bit copy. A robot or clone didn't actually matter: He didn't have a place in this world.

Rouge had been trying to help him, alongside Omega. She said she cared about him and wanted him to be happy. Yet...He can't help but feel that it had something to do with her friendship with Shadow more so than him.

How could she not look at him and think of Shadow instead?

He brought a hand to his forehead and sighed, leaning against a tree. Ugh, now that he was here, he only seemed to have a headache. For some reason, he had a feelings something was about to happen. Something…bad. Terrible.

As if to prove his own point, the sky slowly began to burn a deep crimson. Somewhere over the city a green circle seemed to burn itself through the sky. Distant dark objects fell from the vortex of a portal.

Some of the distant objects seemed to fly away and circle the buildings of Westopolis. He narrowed his eyes at them and wondered what they were. Those things weren't...normal, he knew.

Taking a couple steps towards the city, he stopped as a strange organic star zipped around towards him. He took a step back as he got closer and closer. It stopped in front of him and he raised a hand to defend himself.

Yet it didn't make a move against him. Instead, it circled him, its single eye watching all of his movements. "My...We didn't expect you at all. Two..." It hummed to itself. Was it thinking? Did it even have a brain? It shouldn't.

Pulling away from the star, he crossed his arms in front of him. "Who are you?" He demanded.

The star chuckled. "You can refer to this form as Doom's Eye. We are quite surprised to see you, little copy. We only expected Shadow."

He grit his teeth. Shadow...again. What did either of them have anything to do with this? And he did not appreciate being called 'copy'. "And why was he expected?" He asked.

"Oh, it was part of the oath that fool of a Professor made. A single, immortal soldier that can use the Chaos Emeralds for us--But having two of you...We have truly been blessed this day. What is your name?" The Eye hovered around him, circling like a predator.

Oath? A fool of a professor? Was he talking about Professor Gerald Robotnik? As for his name... "I don't have one," He said flatly. At least, not one that hadn’t been stolen from someone else.

Doom's Eye looked sorrowful at his comment. It seemed to be empathetic to his lack of a name. "Then perhaps we shall call you Umber? If only so that you may have a name." The Eye's voice was sugary sweet.

It sent shivers down his spine. Yet...well, he'd use that name for now. It’s not like he had any real reason to reject it. It’d work, as of now. "Fine. Umber. What do you want from me?" Umber glowered at the organic star.

"Ah...that's simple. In return for the name--Collect the seven chaos emeralds for us? We require them. They were ours to begin with, after all." Doom's Eye did not elaborate--instead, it vanished from Umber's sight.

His nostrils flared and he spun in place, seeking the star. Doom's eye did not reappear; it seemed as if it was gone for now. It still, however, left Umber feeling a little nervous.

Umber pursed his lips. Collect the emeralds...Theirs to begin with? What did any of this even matter? His lips pulled back in a snarl.

He wasn't going to help some nameless being that tried to tie itself to him. Umber also wasn't going to simply gather the emeralds for them. He may have no memories to speak of, but he wasn't a fool. They'd turn on him the first chance they got.

But the emeralds could shed some light on what he should do from now. If he could gather a few, than perhaps he could figure out what he should do with his life. Or at least figure out what they meant when they said the emeralds belonged to them.

(Umber had never considered the possibility that they had hoped for that from the beginning.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...except now he's Umber, not Other Shadow.


	2. sh; prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta`d
> 
> i'll be alternating POVs between shadow and umber. whose POV it is will be shown by the first letter of the ch: u for umber and sh for shadow.
> 
> and a quick note: unlike heroes, i'll only be posting chapters once i am ahead by one
> 
> as an example: once i finish shadow's ch1 i will be posting umber's ch1.

Shadow crossed his arms, the plastic of his grocery bag crinkling with the motion. He watched Sonic doing his stretches and Shadow wondered, not for the first time, why the blue hedgehog was here. Shouldn't he be in Station Square or the Mystic Ruins?

His foot started to tap before he finally heaved a huff. "Sonic, what're you doing here?" Shadow asked, turning away from him to open his apartment door.

The other hedgehog beamed at him. "Aaah, just wanted to see how you were settling in!" Sonic chirped, peering inside with a curious smile. "And you know, making sure you followed through on that deal you made with Tails..."

Ah, yes, the deal. "I'm still waiting for a response, regarding that." Shadow muttered, heading into the kitchen. The paperwork took time to go through, apparently.

Sonic trailed after him, peering around the kitchen in interest. "You're waiting still?? I thought they would've told you by now what's going on with it." He grew closer, as if to help Shadow put his groceries away.

He shrugged. Shadow was fine if they took their time getting the paperwork done. He wasn't eager to have a service chao floating around his house. Nothing against chao, but if it wasn't for Tails' insistence that Shadow get one or else he wasn't allowed to move out?

Yeah, Shadow would never have applied to get a service chao at all.

"Tails'll be glad out signed up at least!" Sonic chirped. "I mean, it'd be nice if you got the service chao before Tail's birthday, but..." The hedgehog shrugged as if it was no big deal.

Tails' birthday? Shadow faltered. He knew birthdays were important to the culture on Gaia, yet he wasn't certain if he should do something for the fox. It’s not as if Shadow had any idea how birthdays worked to begin with. They never did celebrate birthdays on the ARK.

Was he supposed to buy a gift? Shadow assumed that if Sonic was mentioning it, then he expected Shadow to as well. But _does_ Sonic want Shadow to do something? If he did, the hedgehog should just say so.

…He wished Sonic wouldn’t be so damn nosey, at least.

Shadow returned to putting his groceries away before he said, "I can't exactly force the paperwork through." Service Chao paperwork took time, even if Shadow himself would like it be over with already. The sooner it was done, the sooner he wasn’t going to be bullied into living with Sonic and Tails again.

To be clear, it's not like he hated living with them. He just...didn't like how they kept trying to include him in everything. They were almost too considerate of him and it made Shadow uncomfortable.

He had to try to kill them all and they just kept being nice to him.

He closed the door as the last of his refrigerated groceries were put away. "I'll have to wait until it's ready."

"Well, yeah, I just..." Sonic huffed. "Sometimes I forget I just gotta say stuff with you. Look, I'm going throw a party for Tails. Do you think you can be there?"

Oh. Shadow felt a little silly. It seemed Sonic had wanted to ask Shadow to do something: It was just that the thing entailed Shadow going to party.

His first answer would've been a no. The idea of parties...bothered Shadow. Too many people, and any of them were likely ones he didn't know. Even worse, they were probably one that still only knew of Shadow as 'that guy who helped Eggman blow up the moon.'

Not, in Shadow's opinion, something he'd enjoy.

But he did owe Tails for letting him stay so long at his and Sonic's home. Shadow had spent six months there, getting his life in order and it had taken making the deal with Tails to get a Service Chao for the fox to let Shadow live on his own.

Tails also much reminded him of Maria. Smart, kind, and someone who sought knowledge for knowledge's sake. Between Shadow's debt and the reminder of someone he had lost long ago, he knew he couldn't just say no.

He could, however, have stipulations.

"...If this is about a party," Shadow said, rubbing his forehead to push back his headache, "I can't stay the whole time. I don't do well around people." As in he was likely to start yelling at people not well. He didn’t like crowds.

Sonic beamed. "Yeah, sure! It's just going to me, Tails, Knuckles and a couple others--but they're all people you already know! Though you know..." He leaned on the kitchen counter, humming thoughtfully. "Usually, people bring gifts to birthday parties."

Did Sonic think he was an idiot? Of course Shadow knew that. That was one of the few things about birthdays Shadow was sure of, because of the stories Maria once shared with him.

Yet what was he even supposed to give someone like Tails? The fox probably had everything his little heart could desire: A workshop to build things, access to information that'd make others' heads spin, an older brother who would probably buy Tails' the world if he asked for it...

...Speaking of Sonic.

"And what can I give him that you wouldn't have already given him?" Shadow drawled, leaning back on his counters.

It seemed Sonic had already thought of that complaint as he smirked at Shadow. "Easy answer!" Sonic declared. "I can just go with you and help you find something! And then maybe we could race or something!"

...He seemed way too eager to spend time with Shadow.

"Alright, what's going on?" Shadow asked, crossing his arms. "You're acting. Overeager." That was the word for it.

Sonic flushed. He groaned and hide his face in his hands. "Okay, fine, this isn't just about Tails and his birthday party. You could probably find something on your own, I'm just. Really bord."

Oh, so he admitted it. Shadow snorted. He had been getting messages from both Tails and Amy Rose about Sonic being somewhat...annoying recently.

"And _why_ are you bored?" He asked.

The blue hedgehog flung his hands out on front of him, looking exasperated. "Eggman hasn't done anything in months! The only thing he's done was that whole repeat with the Death Egg and kidnapping Vanilla, but that was, like, nothing compared to what he usually does."

And so an adrenaline junkie doesn't get his monthly fix. Was Sonic that eager for Eggman to do something? It seemed somewhat out of character of Sonic.

…Well, just the wishing Eggman to do something part. Adventuring seemed to be in Sonic’s blood.

Then again, he also seemed fairly distressed over it. Shadow wondered if Sonic was the type to get paranoid with Eggman hasn't done anything big in a few months. It's not as if Shadow has known Sonic long enough to be sure of that.

"...Alright," Shadow said, "We can go shopping and then have a race after I bring the gift back here."

Sonic perked up. "Really? Awesome!" He cheered as he bounced out of Shadow's apartment. Shadow tailed after him, shaking his head at the blue hedgehog’s excitement.

* * *

"So where did you get a job at, anyway?" Sonic asked as they strolled down towards the Westopolis mall. "You never said!"

Because Shadow hadn't wanted to mention it. His job wasn't exactly one most people would imagine he'd have, from his past. Chaos, he remembered over hearing that some thought he'd work for GUN.

He'd sooner die before he worked for them.

But Sonic was still waiting for an answer and Shadow didn't really have any reason not to tell him. Well, besides possibly damaging his own pride.

"...Flower shop." Shadow finally admitted, resolutely not looking at Sonic. He refuses to be ashamed of it. Maria has loved flowers, whenever she'd been allowed near the dried ones.

(Live flowers never lasted long on ARK.)

Sonic, however, didn't seem at all shocked at his answer. He just beamed at Shadow. "You having fun? No one bothering you?"

He rolled his eyes. "And who would be dumb enough to bother me?" Shadow had heard enough from his coworkers about how spooky he looked before they got to know him. Which meant they didn't think he was spooky or intimidating anymore.

No, he was not a little grumpy about it because of his pride, don't be silly.

"I mean. You'd be surprised who'd pick fights." Sonic chirped, drawing Shadow's attention away from his thoughts. Sonic's arms were lazily folded behind his head as he shot Shadow a grin.

Shadow sighed. "No, no one has picked a fight with me." There had been, of course, people who were wary of him. Somehow, though, that had changed from wariness to amusement when it came to his coworkers and the regulars to the flower shop.

Beaming, Sonic thumped shadow's shoulder. "That's great!" He grinned, giving Shadow a thumbs up.

...He had no idea how to react to that.

"Let's just get into the mall." Shadow grumbled, turning his attention away from Sonic. He swept into the mall, neatly dodging around a pair of human teenagers.

Sonic yelped as he almost ran into the duo. He caught up as soon as he slipped around them. The two of them made their way through the mall. Most of the crowd was human but then Westopolis was a primarily human settlement.

At least GUN wasn't stationed here.

Well, for now. Shadow knew he'd seen some GUN vehicles arrive in town earlier. He doubted they were here for him, but--Shadow's paranoia meant he'd been avoiding places like the mall.

Why was he dwelling on this all of a sudden? Shadow shook his head and stopped near the wall of the food court. "So." He began. "You're the one who wanted to come here. Any shops that you know Tails would like?"

Sonic jolted at being addressed and grinned. "Yeah, definitely. Uh..." He cast a look around to find a shop somewhere in the area.

"You don't know this mall’s layout, do you." Shadow snorted.

He laughed. "Yeah, uh, you caught me. Do you know where the mall map is?" Sonic tilted his head as he looked around the food court.

Walking past Sonic, Shadow led the way to one wall, where a large touch screen map was embedded into the wall. He tapped it and the ads disappeared, replaced by the map of the mall. He flicked through categories until he reached technology.

Sonic peered around him before getting close to the map. "Uuuh, how about that one?" Sonic suggested, pointing at one of the shops to the far end of the mall from the food court.

There was another map over there. If it turned out that the store they were heading to now wasn't the one, they could just check out that map. It probably wasn't anything like this one, but then Shadow was surprised this one was there.

Something, something, malls weren't that popular anymore. Or they were falling out of favor. Shadow can't remember what he'd heard his coworkers say.

The crowds seemed to shift and pull apart for them. No one actually pointed out Sonic. Which meant it might just be an unconscious reaction to short they were, especially compared to the humans.

He sighed as he ran his hand over his ears. This was better than someone noticing him, next to Sonic. Shadow didn't want someone to recognize from GUN's news reports. Granted it'd been a year since then but--the risk existed.

"Shadow? You okay?" He looked up at Sonic, who was looking at him over his shoulder.

Shaking his head, Shadow said, "I'm fine. I was just thinking." He swept past Sonic before he could ask what Shadow had been thinking about.

Ahead of them was the store--Riol's Tools and Electronics--that they had picked from the map. The entrance was rather plain for a store in the mall and also seemed rather empty. Perhaps it was just the time of day or that people just didn't tend to favor it. Either way, it was just the way Shadow liked it: Not crowded.

He stepped inside, Sonic on his heels. The latter hummed cheerfully. "This is the place, right?" Sonic rubbed his nose as he peered inside the store. "Emptier than I thought it would be..."

Shadow rolled his eyes briefly. "Sonic, not all stores in malls have plethora of people in them." Thank Chaos.

"Aw, but people are good to talk to! Especially to find out if the store is a good one..." Sonic gave him an exaggerated pout.

That's foolish, Shadow thought. Just because others had a bad experience doesn't mean all of them do. He paused as he stopped just inside the store. Damn it, he'd somehow picked up Sonic's upbeat optimism.

(Or maybe that was _Amy's_ \--augh, either way, he'd caught it.)

* * *

He made a face at the items on the aisle shelves. There was a couple of sections were the ones for hanging items. A couple of screwdriver were among them. In fact this whole aisle was just the tools of the store.

Glancing down to the far end of the store, Shadow noticed that there were toolboxes at that end. He frowned to himself and walked over to that wall, peering at the options. The first he spotted were a box of wrenches.

Shadow brought a hand to his head. Why was he getting distracted by wrenches? His mind had been wandering all day over the most random of things. It's as if he couldn't focus--which didn't make sense. He felt fine. Why would he be unable to focus?

Alright, just find something Tails could use and go home. He needed to rest so he could properly focus. Shadow pinched the bridge of his nose. He'd been ignoring his headache, but it probably had something to do with his lack of focus.

Annoying.

He squinted his eyes before passing he snatched up a toolbox of small delicate tools. Shadow didn't know if Tails had one of these already but small delicate tools broke easily. And they were important for poking around the insides of eggman's smallest badniks and eggpawns.

Shadow approached the cashier. It was a cat mobian with dark green fur. They looked up and put whatever they'd been looking at aside. "Hey there," They said, "Got everything you came in for?"

"Yes." He put the toolbox on the counter and began searching for his wallet. It was, of course, just hidden in his quills.

The cashier nodded. "That'll be sixty dollars." They frowned down at the toolbox as if they couldn't quite believe it was so expensive.

It was rather expensive. He must've grabbed one of the high end toolboxes. Yet, that was fine. Shadow had more than enough, considering he didn't need spend as much on groceries as others did.

"Do you take card?" Shadow asked.

They nodded and set up the card reader. Shadow flipped the card in his hands before sliding it through. As it ran the card, Sonic popped up at Shadow's shoulder. "Oh, you already found something? Nice!" He looked excited.

Of course he did. Shadow had promised to race him after bringing the gift back to his apartment. Though he wondered if Sonic was going to buy something.

The cashier was staring at Sonic. "That's--Uh, here's your receipt, sir?" They kept looking back and forth between the two hedgehogs as Shadow took the receipt.

"Thank you." Shadow picked up his purchase and left the store.

Sonic yelped as he followed Shadow. "Some warning would be nice." Sonic teased.

Shadow rolled his eyes. "You're fine. Let's...just get back to my apartment." He pinched the bridge of his nose again. Was his headache getting worse? Shadow was certain that it was.

The motion didn't go unnoticed. Sonic peered into Shadow's face with a frown. "Hey, you okay? You look kind of...bad."

"Yes, Sonic, I adore being told I look bad." Shadow deadpanned. Not that he actually cared what others thought but--if it was getting to the point others could see his headache bothering him, Shadow needed to do something. "...It's just a headache."

Sonic made a face. "Are you sure? Like...it could be a migraine, maybe?" The blue hedgehog crossed his arms in thought.

He can't get sick. Shadow told him as such and Sonic shook his head. "Weirder things have happened, right? Let's hurry back to your place." Sonic took two steps outside and he stopped. "Uuh, we might have an issue."

Issue? Really? Shadow paused as he noticed people were running and crowding inside the mall instead of leaving. He stepped outside the mall and looked up.

For whatever reason, the blue sky was a dark red. Things were falling from what looked like a hole in the sky. Some of those things flew off and around the buildings of Westopolis.

Shadow's head pounded with his headache. "That's not one of the Doctor's plots." He noted dryly.

"Nope. I think...we're going to need to check in with someone nearby. Find out what's going on. Let's go!" Sonic boosted off. Shadow rolled his eyes and followed.

It’s not like finding out what was going on would hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also! i deeply appreciate every single comment i get but due to how busy my life has been getting recently, i feel i may not be able to respond to comments as readily i used to be.
> 
> so this is my preemptive 'hey, thanks so much for commenting' to everyone! : )


	3. u; west rush

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta`d
> 
> i'm.......this chapter has actually been done for a couple weeks, i've just been working on shadow's next chapter.
> 
> anyway, here's some umber who is deep in denial right now.

Umber's skates zipped across the ground, flaring in a way Shadow's did not. He skidded to a stop at the crest of a hill and peered down towards the chaos. Dark figures of black and red raced across the streets. GUN soldiers fought back, bullets bouncing off their enemy's skin without problem.

He stopped to watch them for a long while. A good ten minutes passed before Umber turned away from them. He needed to find a way out of this chaotic invasion. If he hadn't been dragged here by Doom's Eye...

Shaking his head, Umber rushed away out of sight from the GUN soldiers. It wasn't hard as most of them seemed focused on the strange creatures that were likely related to Doom's Eye. They were the same rotted red and ashy black as it was.

There were quite a few GUN soldiers in the city, almost as if they were prepared for this. Had they some sort of advanced warning? Umber wondered if they'd just noticed something was off with the Black Comet.

Umber didn't know. He didn't much care, either, as he had a different goal in mind. To get out of the city before he got dragged into something that had nothing to do with him. No matter what that star said, Umber had nothing to do with these creatures or GUN.

He slipped past the GUN soldiers. One of them was muttering something about the chaos emeralds and Umber zero`d in on that. He snuck in closer, keeping low to the ground to they didn't notice him and try to attack.

"So there's a chaos emerald in the city?" A dark haired soldier was asking. They looked nervous, as the idea of a chaos emerald in Westopolis was scary. Which they might be: Chaos emeralds could cause some damage in the wrong hands.

The soldier he'd hear speaking earlier nodded. "Yeah, I don't know why we haven't gotten it yet. It's pretty dangerous especially with these black arms things going on." The soldier huffed.

Black arms? Umber pressed down against the ground and shimmied closer to the soldiers. "What're black arms?" The dark haired soldier looked as confused as Umber felt.

"These weird alien things we're fighting. Apparently, the commander had an idea of that this was going to happen. Heck if I know how." A red haired soldier crossed her arms with a frown.

The soldiers' conversation drifted off from the subject of the Black Arms and chaos emeralds. Umber slowly made his way back away from the soldiers. That was easier said than done, as for whatever reason they were now more interested in paying attention to their surroundings.

Umber ducked around the corner as soon as he was far enough away from the soldiers. Alright, so the chaos emerald was here somewhere and those Black Arms were in his way. If he had to fight them, than Umber wouldn't hesitate.

He skated away from the squad and began made his way further into the city proper. The way was mostly clear, save for the distant roaring of explosions and fighting. He was drawn towards the fighting, wondering if he could find the chaos emerald in the chaos.

The air of the city was smoky from explosions and gun powder. Umber found himself frowning as he stopped at the crest of another hill in the city boundaries. Were the black arms looking for the chaos emerald? What other reason would they have to attack Westopolis?

It also seemed that the Black Arms had orders to attack everyone and anyone. Umber only knew that, because one of the Black Arms decided he'd make for good target practice at that very moment. He scowled, dodging under the shots and rolling to a stop by the attacker.

He lashed out with a fist and sent the Black Arms toppling to the ground. Umber snapped the gun up and fidgeted with it until he realized it was empty. Fine. He can just use it as a projectile to knock enemies out.

Umber ignored the Black Arms as he stepped further into the city. He was forced to duck into an alleyway as a squad of GUN soldiers passed him by. They noted the Black Arms Umber had left behind and he covered his ears as they shot it down.

Okay, yeah, that was a reason not to want them to spot him.

Focusing his gaze at the end of the alleyway, Umber hurried down it and triangle jumped between the alley walls to get over the wall fence at the end. He landed with ease on the other side and shook the gun in his hand. Alright, now he just...had to figure out where the chaos emerald was.

That was obviously easier said than done. Knowing that the chaos emerald was in the city helped but it was a city. That could literally mean anywhere within city limits, and with how large cities are? That was a lot of ground to cover.

Especially with all the fighting going on. Umber wrinkled his nose in distaste before stepping out of the alleyway. There weren't any other GUN squads here, but several GUN robots zipped overhead. They were doing battle with some flying Black Arms, bullets and lasers flying through the air.

Umber winced at the sight before he skated down the road. He ran into another group of Black Arms and he threw the gun as hard as he could into one of their faces. It collapsed without issue and Umber bounced off the heads of the other two. The final one ran away and Umber let it go.

There was no point in chasing it.

At least that had been Umber's plan. It seemed the Black Arms had other plans as it returned mere moments later as Umber was turning to the north. An ambush of sorts, with the black arms he'd let run leading their charge.

It seemed mercy wasn't an option, then. His lips curled back into a snarl and he snatched up a broken stop sign. Umber swung it at the nearest one like it was a baseball bat. It knocked it back, its green blood spattering across the concrete of the streets.

Umber kicked another's knees--or whatever passed for knees--and smashed the sharp edge of the sign into its head. He dropped the sign to grab that black arms' gun, aiming it and shooting out the remaining two before they could get close enough to hurt him.

That was it, for them. All four, dead. He gagged at the smell they gave off and left both the gun and sign behind. Umber needed to get away. Yet the sound of something drew his attention from his trek north. He looked up and around the fallen forms of the black arms.

A purple form was curled up on the ground, hiding in a crevice between the wall of a building and a crashed car. Judging by the claw marks near the form, the black arms had been trying to reach for the form.

But more importantly: Was that a kid? Yeah, he thought as he edged closer, that little purple form was definitely a little human kid. Umber wasn't sure if they were a girl or boy, though.

For a moment he wondered if he should just move on. GUN would take care of that kid, it had nothing to do with him. Umber had no reason to help the kid when he was trying to find the chaos emerald.

Except, he found himself walking over and kneeling down next to the kid. "You should get out of here," Umber said to the kid.

The kid peered up at him, startled by Umber's presence. They edged away, frightened and confused. The kid didn't look like they were sure of Umber's intentions. Fair; Umber wasn't sure about Umber's intentions either.

"...B-but I don't know the way to the shelters..." The kid finally whispered sorrowfully.

Point made. Umber was a bit surprised by the mention of shelters, but with all the nonsense Eggman got up to, it made sense. He didn't know why he was surprised.

Umber cast a look around the area to search for someone else. Anyone else. To his luck and relief, there was a group of GUN soldiers turning around the corner. He didn’t know where they came from but they may have been drawn to the sound of his fights.

He pointed them out. "There's some GUN soldiers over there. I'm sure one of them will take you there. It's their job, after all." Umber was more than ready to wash his hands of this.

The kid was overjoyed.

"O-okay. Thank you for saving me, Mister!" They gave him a hug and then raced off, yelling that they were lost. Umber was so shocked he almost didn't get away before they noticed him as well.

People touching him....still didn't feel right. He didn't like people touching him. Rouge and Omega had been the expectations. Exceptions that he hadn't seen in a month.

Umber grit his teeth. He left them behind because he was sick of relying on Rouge. Rouge who he still didn't think was helping him because she wanted to. Obligation or money or because she felt she owed something to Shadow made more sense than...than if she cared.

His nostrils flared. Who would care about a copy of the supposed Ultimate Lifeform? A mediocre copy that can't even use chaos as well as he could. Umber still couldn't use a chaos spear, despite his own desperate attempts.

Not that anyone knew about those.

The idea of that left him feeling ashamed. What was the point of a defective copy that can't even use the same chaos powers? Chaos control, notwithstanding. Chaos knew that Umber might even die at any time. His DNA just…wasn’t stable, apparently.

He shook his head. No, he didn't want to focus on that right now. Instead he should continue his search for the emerald. There had to be a clue about it somewhere in the city.

Tapping his skates once against the ground, Umber shot off. Either he’d find a clue, or he’d finally sense where it was.

* * *

Umber squinted at the jewelry store. Did...Did someone really put the chaos emerald in there? He felt the power of the emerald just beyond the glass in front of him. Yeah, okay, it was definitely inside.

He glanced behind him. There was no one there to stop him. Everyone was either evacuated or fighting. Right--Emerald then. Umber pulled his fist back and smashed through the glass. He hefted himself through the window and stepped over the display shelves.

Necklaces dropped and scattered across the ground. Rouge would kill him if she ever found out about this. He shook his head and walked further into the store. From what he can feel, the chaos emerald was somewhere in the backrooms, likely inside a safe.

First, Umber started looking for a key. There was no keys in the front area, but there was a couple by the safes Umber sought to open. He tried both and neither of them actually worked on the safe the emerald was within.

Honestly. Now that his key plan had failed, Umber picked the safe up and threw it as hard as he could into the corner of the room. At first he thought it wouldn't break open but the metal seams of the safe popped apart right away.

Umber stared blandly at the broken safe. Seriously? How in the world does that even work? He shouldn't have been able to break the safe just by doing that. At least, he noted, he got the right safe as he noted the blue emerald sparkling among the remaining sheets of metal.

He knelt down and picked up the emerald. It sparked a pretty blue in his hands and he let out a sigh. It felt like a century had passed since he last held an emerald: They still felt nice to hold. Umber tucked the emerald away among his quills.

Alright. Found the emerald. Now he just needed to get out of this damn city. Umber turned and bumped out of the busted window. If someone took the stuff in this shop, it wasn't Umber's problem.

Of course, it seemed that luck was not on his side as a squad of Black Arms was outside. They didn't seem to realize he was meant to be on their side--not that he actually was--as they lashed out at him. The largest one clubbed Umber into a car.

Glass crunched around him as Umber pushed himself away from the broken car. He bared his teeth at his new enemies and leapt forward. Umber kicked the closet one around the head, letting it fall. He snatched up a large piece of glass and plunged it into a second black arms’ face.

The large one attempted to club him another time, but Umber dodge around and used the last black arms as a shield. He smirked, one fang showing as he picked up a dropped gun. Umber shot the large black arms between what passed for its eyes.

It fell and Umber dropped the gun. Alright, that was...messy. He wiped some of the green ichor that was the black arms' blood off his face. At least he only came out of it with a couple of back bruises instead of bloody wounds.

Umber headed north.

He encountered two squads of black arms and a single squad of GUN soldiers. Every single one of them tried to kill him. Umber's hands shook as he recalled the red blood that had come from the soldiers. But he refused to regret his choice to fight back. Those soldiers had attacked him with intent to kill. All Umber had done was respond in kind. 

Regardless, it did mean that GUN may just target him once this was over. That...mostly didn't matter to him. If anyone other than Rouge or Omega came after him, he'd fight back. If they did...to be frank, he had no idea what he'd do.

As he continued to the north exit of the city, Umber did hear the sounds of sonic booms. Sonic seemed to be in the city and that likely meant the rest of his group wasn't too far behind. Shadow might just be among them, as well. That left him feeling nervous.

Would that Doom's Eye seek Shadow out as well? Umber couldn't see his...original ever choosing to side with the Black Arms. He was more likely to try and tear them down with his bare hands.

He snorted and brought a hand to his head as he slowed to a stop in the middle of a ruined city. Westopolis--It'd take a long time to rebuild this place, if the world hadn't alreayd had precedures for just this type of situation. They were usually caused by Eggman, but...Well, it's not the first time it wasn't Eggman who pulled something terrible.

Umber wondered if the kid he'd saved was okay. It's not like he had meant to save that kid, but it didn't change what he'd done. And he still hoped that maybe he could do some good that had nothing to do with Shadow.

His head pounded with a headache. Umber grimaced and brought his head to his forehead, stumbling slightly with the motion. Why--He hadn't had a headache like this since he'd allowed himself to be drawn to Westopolis. Shouldn't he be fine?

A voice drew him out of his thoughts. "Oh, Umber, why haven't you helped us take the city yet?" Doom's Eye floated out from the shadows of an alleyway, peering down at him. It seemed dissappointed.

He ignored the disappointment. "Why should I? This has nothing to do with me," Umber said. He owed no loyalty to the Black Arms or to Gerald Robotnik. All he wanted now were the Chaos Emeralds.

"It most certainly does. We are your people. You carry the blood of the black arms inside of you, after all." The Eye lectured him, its tentacles fluttering around it. It seemed far too eager to try and convince Umber to join them.

Umber leaned against a car, ignoring the headache pounding behind his eyes. "...My people, huh? What about Shadow, then?" If Umber carried that blood, so did Shadow, right?

Doom's eyes did not seem happy about the mentioned of Shadow. "He....has but one chance to turn back to us left. If Shadow continues on his path, we must mark him as a traitor. He is fighting back against us, after all."

A traitor, huh? Shadow likely didn't see it as betraying anyone just as Umber did not see himself as being on the same side as the Black Arms. At least, that was the impression Umber got from Shadow during the incident with Metal Sonic.

"And if I choose to do that as well?" Umber asked. It was a valid question, after all.

There was a gasp behind him. Umber jerked around to stare at the newcomer. They got far too close to Umber's face for his comfort. "Oh, brother, you wouldn't do that, would you?" They spoke, looking sorrowfully into Umber's face.

Who in Chaos' name was this? Umber had never seen him before--and he's fairly sure this guy wasn't another of Eggman's attempts at clones. Umber took a couple steps back away from the Black Arms alien.

Doom's eye circled them. "Eclipse, this is Umber, one of your new brothers. Umber, this is Eclipse. He will...accompany you to the next stage of our operation," It said.

Eclipse nodded to the eye, bowing at his waist. "Yes, father." He straightened and Doom's Eye seemed to nod back before floating away. Probably to order around more of the Black Arms.

Umber returned his gaze to look back at Eclipse. The alien was the same rotting red and ugly grays as the other Black Arms. Where mobians' eyes were white, Eclipse's were black. His eyes were a dark amber, standing out against the black.

There was no real way to describe the….things that were attached to the back of Eclipse’s head. Tentacles weren’t right but they almost seemed like an attempt to copy of hedgehog quills. Who knew what purpose they served.

Eclipse was also, even by mobian standards, completely naked.

"...Who are you?" Umber asked, feeling uncomfortable by the observation. Doom's Eye called him Eclipse--referred to him as Umber's and Shadow's 'brother' so to speak. Eclipse also called Doom's Eye father.

He knew he was missing some sort of puzzle piece. The tie that explained everything. Yet that puzzle piece was still missing for him at the moment. Umber wondered when he’d find that missing puzzle piece.

Eclipse leaned in too close for Umber's comfort once more. "I'm Eclipse! Father just told you that, of course. We are brothers, if only by the grace of Father's blood." He beamed, as if this was the greatest thing had ever happened to him.

"Can you stop that." Umber snapped before stepping back from Eclipse once more. Personal space, thank you. He looked confused by Umber's request but stood back. Once he was far enough, Umber said, "And you are here for...?"

He smiled another beaming smile, all sharp teeth. A predator. "To help you find the emeralds! I do see you've gotten on already. Why don't we head to one of those ships those awful rebels used to evade us?" Eclipse huffed at the mention of rebels.

GUN, perhaps? "What are you talking about--" Umber jolted as Eclipse leaned in far too close to his face once more.

He tapped Umber's hand. "You have a Chaos Emerald, right?" Eclipse asked, tilting his chin down towards Umber. Chaos, why was he _taller_ than him...?

Umber nodded once, taking the blue emerald out. "Yes, I do, but--" Before Umber could ask what Eclipse had meant by rebels, Eclipse interrupted him with a happy smile. _Again._

"Come, this way now, brother." Eclipse chirped, snatching the emerald. Umber opened his mouth to argue--that was his emerald dammit--the alien raised one hand while grabbing Umber's with the other. "Chaos Control!"

How can he use Chaos Control--?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :^ )


	4. sh; lethal evac

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta`d
> 
> me, screeching on the top of my lungs: ITS FINALLY DONE.
> 
> or more accurately umber ch2 is done and now i can post this chapter orz.
> 
> as a side note! i messed up on the emerald color last chapter: umber is meant to have blue not green. i have since fixed it.

Hefting the present bag in one hand, Shadow threw a chaos spear with the other. Why was it, when Shadow had finally found a moment of quiet and peace, it was interrupted by Chaos? Was he just some sort of magnet for it?

Shadow watched as his chaos spear tear through the wing of one of their enemies. They didn't seem to be robots: Their design was nothing like the eggpawns or badniks that Eggman enjoyed using it. It left Shadow wondering who they belonged to.

A blue streak bounced off a couple of the creatures' heads. Sonic landed next to him, peering at their opponents with a frown. "There aren't robots..." Sonic muttered, looking nervous.

As for why he was so nervous, Shadow wasn't certain. "They do seem to bleed." He agreed with Sonic's conclusion.

"Crap...I have to be extra careful..." Sonic's green gaze flicked around the city street and the last conscious creature. He winced at the dry look Shadow gave him and explained. "I don't kill things."

 _Which_ , Shadow thought, _explained why Eggman was still alive_. Otherwise...well, Sonic was more than strong enough. Granted, he could still drop Eggman in a jail.

Shadow let the train of thought go. It was pretty obvious there was a reason Sonic hadn't done that either, and they had bigger things to worry about at the moment. Especially as the other creature was trying to attack them again.

He dodged back as the last creature's massive fist swung by his head. Zipping passed him, Sonic kicked the creature across the face. It collapsed just as the others had.

"Think they're done?" Sonic asked.

No, they probably weren't. Shadow looked up at the literal green hole in the sky. "I doubt it." He responded.

Sonic wrinkled his nose and said, "Guess we should clean up then, huh? Though we might wanna get that out of your han--Watch out!" Shadow jolted as Sonic pulled him back.

One of the beasts that had been knocked unconscious by Sonic had lumbered back to its feet, awake. It had also just tried to kill Shadow. And while it had missed Shadow, thanks to Sonic, it had not missed crushing something.

Shadow stared at the broken bag loops still around his arm and then at the crushed box of tools on the ground. Delicate tools that were easily smashed. Tools that had been smashed and scattered across the ground.

He felt an inexplicable fury rise up in his chest. Shadow didn't know why he was so angry: He could buy a new box of tools easily enough and it's not like Shadow was hurt by it at all.

Yet Shadow felt like crushing something beneath his heels.

"That's _enough_." Shadow hissed out, lips drawn back to show sharp teeth. Chaos flickered across his hands and he threw a chaos spear point blank in the creature's face.

It shrieked and fell, an arc of gooey green blood trailing through the air. Sonic yelped and pulled Shadow further back. "Shadow, what the heck!" He snapped, looked upset.

Shadow rolled his shoulder out of Sonic's grip. "Stop--" Shadow growled, one hand cradling his head. "--Touching me!"

He bit down on the inside of his lip, tasting blood. The fury was choking him and his head was pounding again, like someone was using his head like a drum. Why was he so angry? He might get a little annoyed by how touchy Sonic could be, but living with the hedgehog had let him get used to it. And the present...That wasn't something worth being this furious about.

Looking up, he noticed Sonic no longer looked frustrated; only concerned. "Shads...What is going on?" He reached forward again but pulled his hands back, as if self-conscious.

Right. He'd told him not to touch him. "I don't know." Shadow hissed softly. He rubbed the bridge of his snout: And here he'd been happy his migraine had seemingly vanished. "I...have no idea what's going on at all."

"Shadow, Shadow. There you are." A voice spoke up behind them. He spun as one with Sonic, who immediately covered up his worry with a cocky smirk. Behind them was a star shaped...thing with a single eye. Its coloring, ashy gray and rotting red, was the same as the creatures they had been fighting.

He narrowed his eyes. "What do you want?" Shadow asked, his hackles rising. Who are you? Why are you here? He didn't ask.

The star rotated, its tentacles waving around it. "Oh, Shadow, you don't know? Did Professor Gerald never tell you the promise he made?" It circled him and Sonic, its single eye staring unblinkingly at Shadow.

It--How dare it bring up Gerald? His lips curled back into a snarl, the strange fury rising again. "Don't speak of him!" Shadow hissed, his nose wrinkled with the snarl. "You have no right to do so."

Shadow hated the fact that Gerald would be remembered as a mad man who almost destroyed Gaia. He refused to allow this invader from claiming connection to him. That was his family--dead as they were--and Shadow refused to allow their memory from being blemished any further.

"Oh, dear boy, he didn't tell you." The star dodged Shadow's Chaos Spear. "Gerald made an oath to we of the Black Arms. An oath to have someone to aid us in collecting our rightful property: The Chaos Emeralds." It dodged yet another of Shadow's spears.

He was about to throw another when Sonic grabbed his wrist. Shadow scowled at Sonic and pulled his arm back. "What are you doing?" He hissed at the blue hedgehog.

Sonic wrinkled his nose at Shadow. "Chaos spears aren't working--And I hate to say it, but I think we need to let it talk itself out." He clearly liked this about as much as Shadow did: It didn't mean Shadow was going to listen to him, though.

Spinning away from Sonic, Shadow said, "You keep blabbing about this promise the Professor made: But you make no sense. The Professor would never make a promise involving me and not tell me about it!" A truth: Gerald had told Shadow from the get go that GUN had funded his project. That he would eventually have to tell them about Shadow.

Unfortunate, than, that they found out by accident and not because of Gerald.

He clenched his hands. "When the Professor asked things of me, he would always tell me all he could. If he did make a promise to you involving me, _he would have said so_."

The star seemed to be thinking. Shadow was tempted to throw another chaos spear into its face. Perhaps if he was fast enough Sonic wouldn't notice? ...No, he would notice. Sonic wasn't that stupid, for all that he was a bit of a moron.

(A moron that had somehow managed to worm his way into Shadow's heart, but a moron none the less.)

"...I am Doom's Eye. Black Doom, your progenitor, will speak with you personally soon." And the star zoomed away around the buildings, vanishing out of sight.

Black Doom? Progenitor? What in Chaos' name was that thing talking about? Shadow crossed his arms, the broken shopping bag loops bumping against his elbows. He was purely created from Hedgehog DNA. He was sure of that.

...If he wasn't sure of that, he wouldn't know what to do. Wouldn't know what to believe. Because if the the Professor had lied to him about that, Shadow wasn't sure what else he could have lied to him about.

Something touched his arm. Shadow jolted and jerked around. Sonic just pulled his arm back and said, "Hey? I know there's a lot going on, but we should probably keep moving. Maybe help with evacuations?"

Do something... Shadow let out a heavy breath. Right, he might be confused but he could just ignore that until he had time to calm down. Seeking answers while angered didn't help one get the answers they wanted.

"Fine. Lead the way."

* * *

Shadow didn't trust the GUN soldiers. They didn't seem to trust him either, all of them eyeballing his black and red coloring. As if that was a sign he was secretly one of these Black Arms. He'd call them rude, but Shadow didn't see the point in arguing with them.

If they chose to think of him that way, he saw no way to change their mind. He would go on as he always did.

Sonic, at least, trusted them not to shoot them in the back. "Besides, if they try to arrest us, we can get out just fine." He'd reassured Shadow which...well, obviously. Shadow had little doubt they'd be able to do that.

That didn't change the fact that he didn't want to have to deal with them trying to arrest him at the same time as defending himself from the Black Arms. It was far too troublesome and distracting. And...well, Shadow doubted Sonic would approve if Shadow killed someone.

He huffed as he put the last of the crates on the truck. This truck was for rations for the evacuated citizens: Most of whom were in shelters a few miles outside of the city. They were safe, as far as Shadow was aware. And it should, hopefully, stay that way.

Turning from the crate and truck, Shadow jolted back. A soldier was standing there, looking nervous. They were holding something in their hand--not a gun, Shadow realized. It was something white and made of cloth.

Shadow looked up at the soldier. "What...do you need." _Be polite, be polite, even if being polite to GUN makes you want to leave the stratosphere..._

"W-well, I thought...Maybe we could mark you as a friendly so you don't get hurt? S-so I thought a white bandanna would be a good idea?" They ducked their head as they held out the cloth in their hand.

That's...Shadow took the bandanna with a confused blink. "...What do you mean?" He asked.

The soldier was patting their belt, clearly nervous. "I, uh. We have standing orders to shoot down any black and red opponent. My squad didn't attack you because you were with Sonic so we thought you were safe..." They stopped patting their belt, as if they had realized what they were doing.

Shadow looked down at the bandanna and then back up at the soldier. "...And this will help how?" He couldn't see how this would help him at all.

They coughed. "Ah, basically? My squad was going to let the others in Westopolis know that you're not one of the enemy. That any black and red hedgehogs with white bandannas aren't with the Black Arms." The soldier kept nervously fiddling with their gloves, belt, and jacket.

He had no idea how to respond. So he just nodded slowly and started backing away from them towards Sonic. The blue hedgehog was chatting with the squad leader as Shadow approached the two.

Sonic looked up as Shadow stopped at his elbow. "Hey, Shadow. What's up?" He asked.

"...I. Need some help." Ugh, he knew he shouldn't be ashamed of having to ask for help, yet he still felt like he should just be able to do, well, anything by himself. Shadow was supposed to be the Ultimate Lifeform, after all.

The leader of the GUN squad peered down at the bandanna Shadow was clutching. "I see Agent Saphir gave you the bandanna." They noted.

That seemed to draw Sonic's attention. "What's that for?" He asked, tugging the bandanna out of Shadow's hand.

He could at least ask. Shadow rolled his eyes. "Agent...Saphir said that it is meant to mark me as an ally so I am not accidentally shot." Which didn't mean much to Shadow. If they had the orders, he'd still be shot later.

Sonic perked up. He, at least, seemed to trust their intention. "OH! Do you need help getting it on?" Sonic asked, fiddling with the bandanna.

"Obviously," Shadow said flatly.

The blue hedgehog pouted at him before he grabbed Shadow's hand. Shadow almost pulled back when he realized Sonic was trying to tie the bandanna onto his upper right arm. When he was done Shadow pulled his arm back and crossed his arms. "Are you done?" He scoffed.

He bumped his shoulder against Shadow's. "Yeah! Anyway, Agent Ysalt, do you need anything else from us? Otherwise, we'll go out and handle the invasion." Sonic tilted his chin up at the squad leader.

Agent Ysalt nodded down to Sonic. They said, "We're good here. You guys go help out in the city: There might be more citizens out there needing help." They turned away as another squad approached, escorting a little girl in a purple dress.

Shadow briefly shot her a look before he said, "Which direction should we head in?" He had gotten used to Sonic leading the way, during the last major adventure Shadow had been on with him.

Sonic tilted his head, thinking. "I dunno...Hey, maybe you should pick a direction out?" He suggested.

What? Him? He might’ve led the way a couple of times but this was a bit much. "I have no idea where to go." Shadow pointed out--even if that was strictly true.

He was given a droll look from Sonic. "That's a lie~" Sonic chirped in a sing song voice. "You have some idea. Just...pick your way. I'll trust you."

Trust huh? It felt oddly heavy to have Sonic's trust. Shadow patted his quills once nervously before he decided on a direction. "North, then," He said, turning to lead the way.

Sonic gave him a thumbs up and fell in step behind Shadow. The way ahead of them was clear of GUN and Black Arms. Shadow's lips curled into a smile as he raced across the street and north.

Something about the north was important. Shadow couldn't tell you why. It just...was, somehow. And while that certainty bothered him somewhat, he was more concerned by something else.

"Are those rings? In a city?" Shadow was baffled. Last he checked, rings only appeared in areas were there was high chaos energy readings. Those places were, usually, areas with a lot of nature. Or a chaos emerald.

...Was there a chaos emerald in Westopolis?

He jolted Sonic popped up around his elbow. "Oh, hey, there are!" Sonic noted the ring trails Shadow had spotted. "Those'll be useful if we get hit. Those one hit ring shields are awesome..."

Shadow snorted before skating closer to a few and absorbing them. He wasn't wrong about the ring shield being useful, but the way he said it...Well. Either way, Shadow didn't usually have much use for the one hit shields anyway.

"What do ya think we're going to find up north?" Sonic asked, slowly zipping ahead.

Good question. "Don't know." Shadow replied, kicking back into his skating pace. They'll find out when they get there.

Shadow's answer seemed to just leave Sonic pouting. "Aw, no idea? Darn. I was kinda eager to fight something." He slowed his run so that he was at Shadow's elbow instead of trying to race ahead.

"I think we'll have plenty to fight." Shadow pointed out. As if to prove his point, a handful of Black Arms appeared from behind a corner. He snorted lightly at the sight of them before tilting his head towards Sonic.

Sonic was already rushing passed him towards the Black Arms. He rolled his eyes as Sonic eagerly started bouncing off their heads. Honestly, and people say Shadow was the violent one.

He raced after him, using his arm to clothes line the nearest Black Arms. It yelped as it fell and Shadow punched it across what counted as its snout. It fell, unconscious, and Shadow raised his fists to handle the next and largest one of the group.

Two gloved hands reached around said Black Arms’ face and covered what counted as an eye. Sonic's head popped up over the Black Arms' head and he grinned wildly. Shadow head butted one knee before using a homing attack on the other. It toppled the Black Arms backwards.

"Hey!" Sonic yelped. "I almost got squashed!"

Shadow smirked. "A shame you didn't." Sonic bumped Shadow's shoulder with a fist before they both turned to the fourth and last Black Arms. After all, Sonic had taken out the third one at the same time Shadow took out the first.

The Black Arms ran away. Shadow turned away from it, eyeballing their path north. "So. Did you hear anything about these things from the agents you spoke with?" Because Shadow had refused to speak to any of the GUN agents beyond asking what they needed help with. And that hadn't been for them.

Sonic shook his head, hooking his hands behind his head. "Nope." He popped the 'p'. "All I heard was that apparently, after they attacked Westopolis, other cities got attacked too."

Other cities? That meant this could be happening everywhere. Shadow narrowed his eyes. Why would GUN put so many of their men in Westopolis when the rest of the world was so threatened? He didn't get it.

Especially if they knew the Black Arms were coming.

Perhaps they'd only had a warning of it? The satellites around Gaia may have given some warning. Yet Shadow had a feeling that the satellites were not the answer, in this case.

A series of gunshots rang out and Shadow jolted. He reached out and latched onto Sonic's shoulder to keep his balance. For just a moment, he saw flashes of red and the sound of alarms. He knew what that was, but he had no idea what had caused it.

"Shadow?" He glanced up at Sonic and immediately pulled his hand back, like he'd been burned. Sonic blinked and smiled. "You okay?"

He shook out his arms. "I'm fine." That was a lie: He was...startled by his reaction to the gunshots. It wasn't like that was the first time he'd heard a gun go off since he'd woken up months ago.

Sonic either didn't believe him and was willing to let him lie or fell for it. Shadow wasn't sure which was worse. Or even if either of those options were bad in the first place.

"Okay. Think we should check it out?" Sonic peered ahead, as if he could see whatever caused the gunshots to begin.

It was probably the GUN soldiers. Which left Shadow wanting to move: He did not want to encounter them. He adjusted the white bandanna on his arm. "No. We should...North. We need to keep heading north." Shadow nodded grimly.

He didn't question Shadow's determination to go north. Instead, Sonic nodded and agreed and the two were off. It wasn't a race like they'd planned for before, but it wasn't like they could race right now.

Unfortunately, their progress was halted as a group of soldiers, possibly even the ones who had shot their guns off earlier, appeared from around the corner. The two groups stared at each other for several long moments before the soldiers raced their guns. They fired at them.

"Hey, what the heck!" Sonic yelped, glancing back at Shadow. "I thought they wouldn't attack us, with that bandanna?"

Shadow shook his head. He had no idea why they had turned on them yet he could hardly consider it a surprise. GUN was always quick to turn on those it claimed to protect. The original ARK incident was another example of that.

Why, then, was he surprised that GUN had betrayed them?

Sonic huffed. "Let's just speed pass them--it’s not like their bullets can touch us!" He laughed wildly before Sonic rushed further north. Shadow sighed, following on Sonic's heels.

They barely made it ten feet before a massive metal thing roared over their heads. They both threw themselves down to the ground, both intent on keeping said heads on their shoulders. Shadow rolled onto his side to watch the strange aircraft zoom away. 

A green force field, he noted first as it hummed slowly out of sight. GUN's bullets seem to do nothing to the force field either. And...well, Shadow had no idea how the thing kept itself in the air. It didn't make much sense to him.

Next to him, Sonic was already recovering. He seemed eager to chase the aircraft, but turned his emerald gaze onto Shadow. "What?" Shadow snapped, feeling...odd about that gaze being on him like that.

"Nothin`! Just...uh, do you still think we should head north?" Sonic bounced from foot to foot, giving the corner the aircraft had disappeared beyond a longing look.

Ugh, fine. It's not like he still felt the urge to go north anyway. "No. Shall we follow that aircraft?" Shadow deadpanned, his jets switching on under his feet.

Sonic's face seemed ready to split in two from how wide the hedgehog's smile went. "Heck yeah! This'll be so cool..." And he was off, a vortex of wind trailing behind him. Shadow smirked as he spotted the GUN soldiers pulled off their feet because of that vortex, falling on their butts.

He followed Sonic's wind trail.

His gaze was pulled towards the aircraft once it was in sight, like it was magnet. It made him feel a little nervous: Things kept happening and Shadow was rapidly feeling like he was losing control. This aircraft was simply making him feel worse.

They'd just have to destroy the aircraft, then. Shadow tilted his chin up to eyeball it. Guns did nothing--and he didn't want to know what would happen if they spin dashed it. His eyes fell down towards a couple of strange gun-like objects left behind by slain black arms.

Maybe...He snatched one up as he passed it. "Sonic, don't spin dash it." Shadow called out to the other hedgehog.

Sonic made a face at him over his shoulder. "Why not?" He called back.

"Do you really want to touch something that vaporized bullets?" Sonic looked like he was genuinely thinking about it. Shadow rolled his eyes, exasperated. "Sonic. No."

He sniffed. "You just gotta be a killjoy, huh, Shads? Alright what's your plan then?" Sonic asked.

Shadow sighed. He raised the black arms weapon in one hand. "I'll use this to deal with it." To emphasize the point, he shot the aircraft with his stolen weapon.

The green barrier shook with the shot.

"...Guns, huh! Doesn't really seem your style, but I gotcha. I'll follow your lead!," Sonic said.

He nodded. Sonic and he should be fine after the barrier was brought down, but they needed to take it down. Shadow almost asked the other hedgehog to grab one too but--well, if it wasn't Shadow's style, then it wasn't Sonic's. It probably didn't even fall into the realm of something Sonic was even somewhat willing to do.

Tucking the thought away for later, he returned to firing at the aircraft. Once or twice it got out of sight and dodged the rays the black arms gun fired. Both times were because GUN thought it was a better idea to shoot at Shadow and Sonic than the clearly hostile black arms aircraft.

One of these days...Shadow tossed aside the weapon as it's ammo emptied. To his surprise, Sonic tossed him another ray gun. When had he grabbed that? He supposed it had worked out, even if he hadn't seen Sonic grab it.

Shadow leapt over some fallen debris before firing on the aircraft again. He slid under a fallen bridge, the space just large enough for him. Sonic, on the other hand, had simply leapt over it. And was also using the black arms situated on top as spring boards.

Oh, they'll be unconscious for a long time.

He emptied the rest of the gun's ammo into the back of the aircraft and hissed in frustration. Seriously? It hadn't broken yet? At least it seemed to be red now instead of being the healthy green it had been before.

Alright. One more gun should take this thing out. Shadow pursed his lips before rushing towards the underbelly of the ship. It didn't seem able to fire on anything below it--and they would surely find some weapon right? The areas they were passing through had enough defeated black arms to be certain of that.

Sonic followed him. "So what're we doing now?" He asked wryly. "I mean, that barrier is still up...."

"I need another weapon to finish it. Unless you want to fire something?" Shadow deadpanned.

He shook his head. "Can't," Sonic said.

Shadow shot him a look. "Can't what?" He growled, a touch irritated. Why couldn't Sonic use his damn words when they were actually useful?

"Tried using one of those ray gun things! They don't work for me, for some reason?" Sonic did his best attempt at a shrug without slowing down. It looked strange when it was paired with Sonic's running stance.

And yet. "You did?" That seemed weird. Unless Sonic got itchy about how he was just following Shadow here. That made a little more sense. "Perhaps it didn't have ammo?"

The aircraft rocked above their heads. Sonic shook his own head. "Nope! It was the one I threw you, remember? It was going hot for you but stayed cold for me." He ducked under a flying piece of debris.

...Right then. Shadow had no idea what to say to that. It should have worked for him, right? Granted, Shadow had no idea how those guns worked but they were both Chaos wielding hedgehogs. What was the difference between them that the gun could sense but not them?

He winced minutely as a building exploded over their heads. No more thinking about this. They needed to focus on the actual problem at hand. He could worry about the guns later, when the world wasn't exploding around them.

Shadow leapt over the remains of a car and kicked up a discarded ray gun near the broken tires. He took in what he assumed was the clip--a small blinking green light on the side of the showed it had half a clip left. Or he assumed that meant half. It's not like he had manual for it.

Twirling the gun, Shadow sent another current of chaos energy through his air jets and sped up to Sonic, who slowed down in response. "When the barrier is down," Shadow said, "You should be able to use a homing attack without vaporizing yourself."

Sonic stuck his tongue out at him. "Okay, okay, I got it. Let's keep it up!" He dashed forward to keep pace with the nose of the aircraft.

The dark hedgehog sighed before firing on the aircraft once more. He didn't even had to empty this ray gun before the aircraft's barrier suddenly broke. The shattering sound was sharp and it hurt, like getting stabbed in the side.

His head pounded as if to remind him of the migraine he was still ignoring.

"Yahooo!" Shadow looked up as Sonic bounced up and over the aircraft. Every bounce across the top of its silver hull seemed to do damage. He supposed that he might as well follow Sonic's lead.

Which meant he bounced across the aircraft in a similar manner. Half way down the body of the aircraft, however, Shadow changed his trajectory to latch onto a handhold on the aircraft's body. He braced himself against it and raised a hand. Using chaos spear without an emerald was exhausting but he could still do it without issue.

He threw the chaos spear, which exploded across the tip of the aircraft. Sonic bounced through the smoke of the explosion, his quills grinding into the hole left behind the chaos spear. He uncurled and skipped across the back two steps at a time.

Shadow let go of the handhold and flew back from the aircraft. It zoomed off course and crashed into a half collapsed building. It exploded on contact, the rest of the building collapsing down on it.

There was a wild laugh from his right, where Sonic was spinning in a dance. "We did it!" He cheered, snatching up Shadow's hand in his own and spinning him around in a dance as well.

Shaking him off, Shadow patted himself down. "No need to get so excited about it." He deadpanned.

He looked like he was ready to argue the point but Shadow raised an arm to stop him from moving. "Hey, what's up?" Sonic raised an eyebrow at him, one hand on his hip.

"Did you hear that?" Shadow peered through the ruined buildings. No Black Arms or GUN...what had that noise been?

Sonic frowned. "I didn't hear anything?" He mumbled, confused.

That...made some amount of sense. Shadow's hearing was better than most mobians--generally most people. He should've expected Sonic not to have heard what he had.

He cleared his throat. "I heard rocks shifting. Come out! I know you're there!" Shadow called out, his arms loose at his sides.

Finally, the culprit came out from beyond a couple of broken buildings. The culprit was the same fleshy starfish from earlier. Doom's Eye, Shadow remembered it had called itself.

Its single eye roamed before it studied Shadow intensely. It hovered around him and Sonic, watching their movements. Sonic shifted to cover Shadow's back, cockily smirking at the star.

"Shadow. The one created Professor Gerald Robotnik." It spoke, twirling through the air like a starfish through water. "The one who was promised to us, to Black Doom. To The Black Arms. Why do you reject us?"

He scowled. "Are you still talking about? You keep repeating yourself." Shadow hissed, his gaze following the star's movement through the air. 

It ignored his question. "I am Doom's Eye, as I stated before. Black Doom is...unable to be here at this moment, so he shall speak through me." It's demeanor seemed to change, despite it being only a star. Now it almost seemed threatening when it was just pathetic before. Shadow stepped back and then bit his lip: he hadn't meant to do that.

It spoke. "I have watched you fight our forces despite the fact that you are meant to be ours. You have one last chance to come to us--after this test. Black Bull!" It sped away after this declaration and damnation of Shadow.

What? That--None of that made any sense. It was still spouting nonsense, even if it had been intimidating for a moment. The Professor had always been up front with thing he had wanted Shadow to do. He would've told Shadow, if he had made some oath to some alien race. And what was that 'black bull' thing about--?

Shadow stumbled as the earth shook. He felt Sonic grab onto Shadow's shoulder to steady himself. "The heck is that?" Sonic yelped in his ear.

Before Shadow could respond, a strange creature burst from beneath some of the broken buildings. It looked almost like an blown up bee as to the point that it didn't look like it should be able to fly. Oh, and it was of course the same coloring as the Black Arms.

"Seriously? More boss fights?" Sonic whined.

He shot Sonic an annoyed glance. "You were really still calling it that?" Shadow asked as his gaze returned to the Black Bull.

Sonic huffed. "Hey, it fits, so I'm using it!" He bounced ahead, using the lamps to send him into the air. Shadow sighed and followed his example, using the opposite lamp to fly up onto the Black Bull's back.

The Bull shook, trying to knock them off, but Shadow latched onto the wing. Sonic, somehow, kept balance without grabbing anything. "So what was your plan?" Shadow deadpanned, glancing over his shoulder at the blue hedgehog.

"Oh! I didn't really have one. I thought we'd just beat it down until it stopped." Sonic laughed brightly, one foot braced behind him.

Why had Shadow thought any different? He turned his attention away from Sonic and peered towards the Bull's head. Maybe there was a weak point there? There seemed to be a couple of boils scattered across the body: It reminded Shadow of the boils on the Biolizard after it became the Final Hazard.

...Well, it wouldn't hurt to take them down. Shadow waited until the Bull stopped shaking and surged forward, popping the first two closest to him. Behind him, Sonic yelped and he turned--only to bucked off its back and down to the roads below.

Sonic also seemed to have been knocked clean off the back as he landed next to Shadow. "Jeez, a little warning?" The blue hedgehog tapped his foot a couple times.

"Maybe you should have a plan before running right into a fight." Shadow shot back with an irritated scowl. Seriously, at least Shadow did something.

He pouted at Shadow but he turned away. Instead, Shadow sped forward to catch up to the Black Bull. There didn't seem to be any GUN solider squads around--nor any more Black Arms squads. Good, they wouldn't get in the way as he tossed himself towards a building support and used it to bounce up towards the Bull again.

There were ever more boils on its back. These were larger and angrier looking than the previous. Shadow supposed if they were on a person, they would be itching at them from the pain they seemed to cause. At least they seemed to hurt the Black Bull.

Shadow managed to bounce across two, both of them popping behind them, before Shadow was shaken off once more. He landed neatly next to Sonic, who was keeping pace with the Black Bull. "So what're you actually doing up there?" Sonic asked as he hooked his arms behind his head, running backwards.

Show off. "There're boils on the back. Pop them--They seem to be the weak point," He said.

He gave Shadow a thumbs up and made his way to the Bull's back. Shadow watched from below, hoping to spot when the boils would reform. He blinked in surprise as he notice a couple boils form on the bottom as Sonic was thrown off. If they started forming on the bottom and top...

"Sonic!" Shadow gestured to the bottom as the other hedgehog landed next to him. "Take the bottom. I've got the ones on the top!"

Without waiting for Sonic's reply, Shadow shot towards the nearest leverage and shot up once more. He latched onto the wing as the Bull's body shook again: Sonic must've already handled the boils below.

Once the shaking stopped, Shadow stomped out the boils. He almost expected another shake to throw him off, but the Black Bull descended--no, it'd be better to say it fell midair and onto the broken highways. It shuddered and went still.

...Seriously? That was all it took to finish it? That was hardly anything--Doctor Eggman's, no, Metal Sonic's attempts to kill them in Shadow's previous adventure had done better. Even that Egghawk had been more dangerous than this nonsense!

Shadow jumped down from back of the creature, his shoes clicking metallic against the pavement. "Sonic?" He called out, not seeing the familiar blue quilled spines anywhere nearby. Where had he gone?

He stepped around the Black Bull, looking for Sonic. The other hedgehog was nowhere to be seen: It was as if his blue form had just vanished into thin air. "...Hey, Faker?" He tried the stupid insult he'd thrown out in the past.

"Ouch." Sonic laughed shakily just out of sight. "I thought we move passed the Faker stuff?"

Letting out a sigh, Shadow jogged to where the voice came from. "Maybe you shouldn't vanish on me like that, then." He trailed off as he turned around the Black Bull's body; Sonic's arm was trapped under one of the small pudgy leg like appendages.

Sonic gave him a one armed shrug. "Oops? Sorry--Got myself caught, haha." He tugged on his arm and sighed, clearly annoyed that he couldn't get his arm free.

He dropped down next to Sonic and grabbed the leg. "Get ready to pull your arm free," Shadow said before he hefted the leg up with ease. Sonic rolled back almost immediately after he pulled his arm back.

"Woof. Thanks, Shads." Sonic patted his arm, wrinkling his nose at the red blood crusting in his fur.

Frowning, Shadow said, "Your arm was injured." Maybe not broken, but it was definitely hurt badly enough to bleed. How had that happened.

Shrugging, Sonic stood up. "It's fine! My arm...it's not bad so it'll heal in a day or so." He ran a hand along his spines, laying the wild quills down.

Why was he so flippant about his own safety? Shadow knew why he was--his body healed faster than anyone else's on the planet. Sonic? His chaos energy was ridiculously powerful but that didn't mean he could just....regrow an arm if he lost it.

Annoyed, Shadow furiously pulled Sonic's ear. The other hedgehog yelped and stared at him, startled by Shadow's action. "What was that for??" He huffed.

"How do you think Tails would feel if he saw you get hurt?" Shadow snapped, pulling away. "Moron. You're just worrying the people around you."

Sonic blinked at him in confusion. Shadow rolled his eyes and turned fully away. "I'm going to follow those Black Arms." He declared.

Behind him, he heard Sonic jump up to his feet. "By yourself? I can come with--"

"No." Shadow snapped, looking over his shoulder. "You go after the evacuated citizens, make sure GUN isn't doing anything, and get that wound taken care of." He turned his gaze away again and made his way north. They all seemed to be heading that way, anyway.

There was a beat of silence as shadow walked away. And then: "Hey, Shads!" Sonic called out again.

He sighed and glanced back once more. "What?" Shadow hissed.

"I'll go do that, sure. But only if you race me once all this is over, `kay?" Sonic grinned, unbothered by Shadow's irritation. "You still owe me one, after all."

...He was talking about his early promise to race Sonic. Shadow looked away, letting his irritation flow off him with most of his tension. "Fine. I doubt you'll win though. You keep lagging behind." He drawled as he returned to walking away.

"Hey, rude! I'm sure I'll win." Shadow could hear the wink in Sonic's voice. "I'll see you then, Shadow!" And he was off, the sound of the wind all that was left of him.

Alright. Alone, again. Time to find out what was pulling him north this time...because he doubted it was another of those aircraft tanks.

Shadow let out a breath. "Time to find some answers about what that eye was talking about."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> emerald tracker  
> shadow: 0  
> umber: 1
> 
> i'm weirdly nervous about this chapter. idk why but i am. i hope everyone enjoys it!
> 
> (oh, and i'll try and reply to comments when i update the story, okay?)
> 
> edit: WHOOPS i uploaded a slightly older version of the chapter, it's fine i fixed it


	5. u; flying canyon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd

Umber pulled his lips back into a snarl as he tried to right himself. Had he passed out? Even if he hadn't, he felt dizzy enough that he felt like he should've. That had not felt like a Chaos Control, not to Umber.

"Ooh...Brother, are you alright?" Eclipse loomed over him. Ah, he'd fallen to his knees. That explained why he couldn't stand properly. He wasn't standing at all.

He waved the Black Arms away from him. "Don't touch me." Umber hissed. When would this guy get the hint? Umber didn't like being touched by those he considered friends, let alone presumptuous 'brothers' whom he had only just met.

...Dammit, he just thought of Rouge and Omega as his friends again.

Umber pursed his lips as Eclipse fiddled with the chaos emerald. "Why do you not like me touching you? Father doesn't seem to care much--no other Black Arms does." He's pouting at Umber, fangs sticking out from behind his lips.

Chaos, was he supposed to explain how Gaia works to this alien? "...It makes me uncomfortable." Umber paused, patting red dust off of him. "...Give me back my emerald."

Eclipse huffed, placed the emerald in his hands, and turned away from Umber. He'd crossed his arms, staring out across the ruins and canyons they were in. Umber ignored the pouting tantrum he was throwing, instead focusing on the environment they were in now.

It was very different from Westopolis, ruined or no. Red and gray dust twirled through the air, coloring the blue sky just a touch purple. Beyond Umber's sight, there were pockets of red sky, no doubt where the Black Arms were invading from.

Below, the ruins around them were mostly a tan color, dusted with red and gray. Umber wondered when these ruins were from and who these ruins belonged to. Echidna, like that Guardian of the Master Emerald, perhaps?

What was his name again….? Knuckles? Kneecaps? Umber was blanking out on the Guardian’s name.

"Umber? Brother?" He jolted and turned his attention back to Eclipse, who looked like a sad kicked puppy. Eclipse tilted his head at him. "Are you alright?"

Umber shook his head, turning his head away from the Black Arms. "I'm fine. What did...Black Doom say he wanted here, again?" Umber wasn't even sure if the alien had mentioned anything, to him. Not that Umber was going to follow those orders, anyway.

Eclipse tilted his head down at him. "He wants us to turn the shield generators on, remember? So we can use this ship against the rebels! ...Or, I guess, the rebels' descendants. It doesn't matter, really." He beamed out across the ruins.

He stared at Eclipse's eager expression and the ruins before them. Ruins, made of old rock and granite. Ruins that looked firmly entrenched into the earth. How in the name of Chaos and Solaris was this thing supposed to fly?

Or maybe it was an...ocean ship? Though, that didn't make much sense when paired with aliens. And the fact that it was made of stone.

"...Right." Umber decided he was not going to burst Eclipse's bubble. Partially because he didn't see reason to--and partially because something about Eclipse was off, something that made Umber nervous. As if he would be in danger if he said anything about how clearly they couldn't fly a chaos damned ruin.

Besides, Umber didn't really want to see that kick puppy look again. It was bothersome and a little creepy the first time: Umber didn't want a repeat occurrence.

Eclipse beamed at him and patted himself, mimicking Umber's actions from earlier. "Well, you don't have to do this, Brother! You still seem tired from the Chaos Control: I can handle turning on the shield generators. I'll tell Father we did it together, too! Just stay here, okay?" Eclipse patted Umber on the head before rushing off.

Two thoughts popped into Umber's head: _One, he just patted me on the head like I'm a child and two, Wow, he's...almost as fast as Sonic, Shadow, and I._ He frowned, ears flicking in irritation.

He really can't wait until he could get away from all this black arms nonsense.

* * *

Umber stayed there for a grand total of ten or so minutes before he got impatient. He wasn't here to help the Black Arms to begin with--he was here in search of a Chaos Emerald. Not that he knew there was one here or not. But…

He did feel something, distantly. It was a pull similar to the one that had dragged him to Westopolis. The only difference was while that pull had dragged at him, like it was pulling at his insides, this one felt like a child pulling on his hand. Like it was just trying to get his attention.

Almost like the feeling he had gotten before picking up the blue chaos emerald.

Frowning to himself, Umber kicked the jets of his shoes on and jumped down from his perch. The jets cushioned his fall and he immediately sling-shot himself forward. Umber squinted against the wind and dust: It was hard to see, down here in the storm.

At least the path was generally straight forward, from what he had seen from his perch.

As the wind blasted against his fur, Umber skated along the ruins, avoiding the groups of Black Arms. He'll just...head to that spot and figure out what was pulling him. Maybe if he found out what that was, he might be able to deal with it easier in the future.

He slowed to a stop as he reached a fork in the path. Did they go to the same point? Umber brushed his quills back before covering his eyes. Maybe...he should follow the path where there weren't Black Arms; if only to avoid unnecessary combat in this mess.

Nodding, Umber turned away from the path of Black Arms and down the other. The ruins shook around him and he stumbled with the shakes. Something rumbled behind him and Umber spun on his heel. The pathway behind him had crumbled, the rocks disappearing into the fog of red and gray dust.

Wonderful. He can't even turn back now. Umber shook his head with a sigh and fired up his jets again. He needed to keep moving; especially if the ruins kept breaking apart around him. Here’s to hoping it wasn’t a dead end.

Umber raced down his chosen path with a scowl. Not being able to backtrack was a problem, if it turned out this route was a dead end, like he’d hoped it wasn’t. He, Rouge, and Omega had run into quite a few of those back when he thought he was an amnesiac Shadow.

The reminder of his own mistaken identity made him falter and stumble. Umber tripped over his own feet and rolled over and over again across the stone ruins and winced when he stopped. That was definitely going to bruise for a couple of days.

He groaned and pushed himself up from the ground. Great, he was covered in dust now. There was absolutely no saving his fur without a bath now. Umber looked up and spotted a pair of dusty green and yellow boots.

What?

"Hey. What're you doing around here, Shadow?" A masculine voice spoke up.

Umber instinctively scowled at being called Shadow. "I'm not Shadow." He growled, looking up as he knelt on one knee.

The speaker was, to his surprise, Knuckles. The echidna that he knew Rouge liked quite a lot. He was coated in almost as much dust as Umber was now and looked miffed.

The Guardian--Knuckles?--rolled his eyes with a soft snort. "Yeah, alright. What's your name, then?" He asked, offering a hand.

He rejected the echidna's hand to stand up on his own. Umber scowled as furiously as he could at Knuckles. He couldn't judge how good it actually was, because all he did was raise an eyebrow at Umber. It was almost as if he was amused by Umber than annoyed.

Umber didn't know how to react to that response so he just half turned away from the other mobian. "...I'm Umber." He finally threw out his gaze turned away from the Guardian.

"Well, good to meet you. Name’s Knuckles, Guardian of the Master Emerald." Knuckles pounded one fist into the other. "Now why are you here, anyway? That annoying bat keeps bothering me about you."

Rouge? Why in the world--Ah. She still wanted him to move in with her (and Omega), didn't she?

Umber wrinkled his nose. "I'm not moving in with her." He shot at Knuckles.

Knuckles rolled his eyes. He said, "Yeah, I'm not saying you are? I want to know why you're in my hunting practice area."

His...what? "You mean these ruins?" Umber asked, gesturing to the storm and fog of dust around them. Why would you practice hunting in ruins? Why would Knuckles be practicing hunting at all?

"Obviously. What else would be a good place to practice treasure hunting?" Knuckles crossed his arms with a snort.

Oh. Treasure hunting. That made far more sense, just judging by Rouge's comments when she spoke of the Guardian. He avoided Knuckles' gaze as he walked passed him.

Knuckles grabbed his shoulder. "You didn't answer my question."

Umber turned and glared at him before pulling himself free. Why did people keep touching him? Umber was going to lose it if even _one_ more person touched him. "I'm trying to find something. That's all." He grumbled before tearing his gaze away from Knuckles.

For a moment, he almost expected Knuckles to grab him again. Instead Knuckles trailed after him as Umber picked up speed. He should've expected him to keep up: Knuckles did regularly keep up with Sonic, after all.

Perhaps, if he ignored him long enough, Knuckles would leave on his own.

He knelt and skidded across the ground under a ruined bridge. Umber swept one leg back and immediately kicked off again. For a moment, he thought he'd lost Knuckles, but he heard the echidna's boots hit the ground behind him in a steady beat.

How to shake him off... Umber was about ready to stop and yell at him again when he broke through the windy fog storm of dust into an eye of peace. For just one long moment, he had the chance to savor the quiet of what appeared to be a courtyard. It was cut short by a black arms firing at him.

It looked like his early thought of both routes leading to the same place may be right. Umber dodged under the blast and watched Knuckles roll around it to give the black arms an upper cut. It fell like a broken ragdoll, the single hit taking it out.

Chaos, how could either he or Shadow be related to these...things? They were terribly fragile: If there was one thing Shadow at least was, it wasn't fragile. Why in the world were these black arms the main force?

"What the heck are these?" Knuckles toed the collapsed black arms with his foot.

Umber snorted. "Black Arms. They're...aliens, I suppose, invading the planet." Which he would know, if he hadn't been out in the middle of nowhere.

Knuckles wrinkled his nose. He looked up and said, "Alright. Well, we've got more company!" Knuckles dashed forward, swinging his fist and knocking another black arms clear away from them.

Wonderful. For all that Eclipse claimed Umber was his 'brother', the other Black Arms seemed to disagree. Which was fine by him.

Using one of the black arms' faces as a spring board, Umber leapt behind the small squad of black arms. He snatched up one of the abandoned ray guns and shot them down from behind. Umber smirked to himself: The Black Arms weren't very brought, were they?

Before he could fire on the last one, it fell, Knuckles rolling his shoulder just beyond it. "They aren't so tough." Knuckles declared.

"I should hope not." Umber deadpanned, tossing the ray gun away. It was almost out of ammo anyway.

Knuckles smirked slightly. "I bet," He said with a drawl, "I could beat more than you."

Umber squinted at him with a scoff. "I doubt you could keep up with me at all." He paused and then frowned. "...I know what you're trying to do." Umber crossed his arms and glowered at Knuckles, taking a few steps back.

The guardian's smirk widened. Tilting his head back, Knuckles said, "Oh, do you now?"

"...It's not going to work."

He nodded. "Yeah, I'm sure." Knuckles punched on hand into another, turning away from Umber.

...Damn it, he was right. Umber was going to fall for it. He couldn't help but want to compete: Umber freely blamed Omega for that habit, considering how often they'd competed over eggpawn kills.

Umber swept passed Knuckles with a hard scoff. "Well. I suppose I'll be getting the most."

"Yeah, well, we'll see about that!" Knuckles declared with a smirk. He surged passed Umber and back into the storm beyond their courtyard. The dust blasted against them once more but Umber ignored it. He had a goal now: Kill as many of the Black Arms as he can.

There weren't many Black Arms along their chosen path: Most likely, the majority of them had moved on or were trailing Eclipse. And Umber didn't much want to run into Eclipse right now.

He couldn't deny, though, that it wasn't fun to compete with others. It was fairly annoying that he just had this realization. Why hadn't he noticed it before, when he had competed with Omega?

(Or maybe he had, and he just didn't want to acknowledge it, out of fear of being compared to Shadow. Umber wasn't sure.)

While Umber was knocking a Black Arms clear off its feet, the buffeting wind of dust suddenly cut off. He stumbled in surprise and Knuckles caught him before he fell. He pulled himself free from the guardian's grasp.

Knuckles raised an eyebrow but didn't address that. "Looks like we're out of Black Arms to fight. I got about, oh, fifteen? How many did you get?" He rolled his shoulders and shook out his arms as he spoke, as if getting ready for round two.

"...I didn't actually count." Umber admitted with a wrinkled nose, turning away from Knuckles.

He hummed in response. "That so? Guess you had some fun huh." Knuckles tilted his head at him. "Shadow never seems to like competing in _anything_ if you aren't Sonic."

Huh. That's strange. Umber thought he'd loved competitions, considering what Rouge had said about Shadow. The more he seemed to learn about Shadow, the more he confused Umber.

"You seem to know more about these black arms guys then I do." Knuckles continued speaking. "Anything you know that I don't?"

Umber hesitated. "...I'm not sure. All I know is that they're seeking the chaos emeralds for some reason." There was more that he knew, for sure, but for now, he felt hesitant to let anyone else know all the details he had.

He wanted to keep all his cards close to his chest, just in case.

Knuckles snorted, unaware of Umber's thoughts. "When isn't someone after the chaos emeralds? I'll have to join up with Sonic and the others after I check up on the Master Emerald. I doubt they have any interest in it, but I need to do my job."

Frowning, Umber glanced at Knuckles over his shoulder. "Shouldn't you be more concerned about the emeralds being sought? Those that do usually intend to destroy the world, after all." Umber pointed out. At least, that seemed to be the case from the stories he'd read in the library.

Ah, the joys of archived newspapers.

"I'm more concerned about them being put in one place than someone's intentions." Knuckles grumbled as he peered over the edge of the path.

That didn't make much sense. Umber voiced that opinion and added; "And what would intention matter?" Chaos Emeralds made your intentions real, didn't they? So someone with good intentions...

Knuckles huffed. "That's what Sonic or Shadow would say. But you hedgehogs--you all keep thinking putting all that energy in one place is a good idea. As if a storm in a bottle is a great idea."

Umber rolled his eyes, hard. "That's not an explanation, Echidna."

"You want an explanation? Fine. Those emeralds are extremely powerful. Even one in the hands of someone who would abuse it, for good or bad, could kill thousands if not millions. And all seven would be universe destroying, if used wrongly, no matter the user’s intentions. There’s a _reason_ why my people both feared and revered the golden hedgehog in the murals of Angel Island. " He swept passed Umber, his red dreadlocks trailing behind him.

He stared at the other mobian before deciding to let it go this time. There were plenty of things he'd fight about, but this? This he'd let go. It's not like Umber was really an expert on Chaos and Chaos Emeralds, for all that he can use chaos control. It was all he really could do with chaos energy.

But Knuckles may have a point, considering the Black Arms were seeking the emeralds themselves. They weren't exactly a shining example of kind, gentle beings. Eclipse had been the kindest of them so far and even he had been rather...eager for blood and violence. 

(Umber still didn't know what all the nonsense about rebels was. What rebels could he have been possibly talking about? Last he checked, no one even knew what the Black Arms were until they showed up.

He's pretty sure you have to know what something is before you can rebel against it.)

Huffing to himself, Umber followed Knuckles' trail down a winding path of gray and red stone. The Guardian seemed intent on getting somewhere, though Umber had little clue as to where. Maybe...could he feel that weird pull too?

If he did, than it had nothing to do with the Black Arms. After all, Knuckles had no connection to the Black Arms as far as Umber was aware of. Unless he had some secret unknown relation--but that was as likely as Umber secretly turning out to be the original Shadow and Shadow being the clone.

That was to say: Not at all.

He startled as he heard Knuckles groan. "What are you doing?" Umber asked, jogging to catch up to the Guardian. He was just glowering at something in front of him.

...Was that a red star ring? Why was it all grayed out instead of the regular red? Umber reached out to take the ring into his hands and winced as Knuckles slapped his hand. "What was that for?" Umber snapped, lips pulling back to snarl.

Knuckles matched Umber's expression with his own furious glare. "There's obviously something wrong with it. Why in the name of Tikal would you ever consider picking it up like it's a normal one?" Knuckles shot back.

The fact that Knuckles kept making fairly good points was annoying. Because it meant that he couldn’t just willfully ignore him. Umber pulled his arm back with an unhappy growl. It was even more frustrating in that Umber still had the urge to pick the ring up despite the fact that he knew it wasn't a smart idea.

(Umber had somehow already forgotten that he was being pulled towards something. And that something was the very grayed out red star ring he wanted to snap up. Ah, if only he had remembered that, before he did something unwise.

Like right now, actually.)

"If there's something wrong with it, than I suppose I'll deal with it. Better me than someone else. Like _you_." Umber shot at Knuckles before grabbing at the gray-red star ring. He’s the expendable one, after all.

Knuckles let out a loud hiss. "Umber, _no_ \--"Umber felt the energy spread from his hand to the rest of his body. Knuckles reached out to Umber just as Umber himself blacked out.

* * *

As Umber's vision came back to him, he realized that there was definitely something wrong with the special zone.

First off, this one in particular seemed to be a broken mess of decaying plants and scattered orbs. He'd heard of special zones similar to this one, but this didn't look much like what he had heard before. It was supposed to just be a sphere of checkers with smaller red and blue spheres scattered throughout.

Ignoring the decaying plants, which were a withered red and black, Umber looked at the orbs. There only seemed to be blue ones: The only red in the area came from the plants dying around him.

What was supposed to be stopping him from collecting them all? He frowned before shaking out his limbs and grabbing the closest one to him. It barely touched the tips of his fingers before it vanished, absorbed like a regular ring.

Okay, so he doesn't need to actually grab them. Good, that'll make thing much easier. Umber eyeballed the line of blue spheres and began the chase.

Except he nearly tripped over one of the plants.

That hadn't been there before he'd started running. Umber watched the vine until he saw it moving its withered form closer to his foot. His eyes widened and he spun around to return to the sphere chase.

The plants were alive. Alive and it seemed they were very eager to try and choke him out. He was fast enough that he seemed to dodge most of the smaller vines without even noticing them at first but the larger ones? They were sharp, with red thorns pricking off the black vines.

Dangerous for Umber's continued health. He really did wish he could use chaos spear now, when it would be the most useful. Because punching those vines? Seemed like a terrible idea.

Touching them at all seemed like a bad idea.

His gaze zero`d in on the final orb as he dodged under another vine. This was good: Umber was nearly out of here already! Not...that he actually knew how long this was taking. He could've been here a hour already.

Umber threw the thought away as he snatched the final sphere in his hands. The vines stopped moving around him and he let out a sigh. Okay, so what now? He'd gotten all the orbs: If there was a chaos emerald here, he'd like it now, thank you.

He dropped.

Instinctively curling into a ball, Umber bounced across the ground as he landed. Landed where, he didn't actually know. He uncurled to look around and decided that, yes, he still didn't know just from that. It just looked like an empty tube surrounded by inky water.

Wait...The emeralds he, Rouge, and Omega had collected during the Metal Sonic debacle had been in something similar. Umber grimaced. Two tests? He thought there was only one!

Umber looked up as a red light zipped passed his head. The red chaos emerald zoomed down the tube and he realized that, yes, this was the chase test. Nodding to himself, Umber kickedon his jets and began his skate towards the emerald.

All he had to do was beat it. And he felt faster than he usually did. Had the blue orbs given him some sort of boost?

Either way, Umber was quickly catching up to the emerald. He trailed just underneath it for a few minutes when he heard the sound of something break behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, he immediately pushed his speed: The glass of the tube had shattered and the inky black water was flooding the tube behind him.

He reached up towards the emerald: He absolutely had to capture it before the water swept him away. Umber realized as his fingers skimmed the bottom of the emerald that he didn't know how to swim.

Shoulders shaking, Umber kicked against the ground and missed the emerald. It zipped ahead and he cursed. How was he supposed to keep up with it with so much going on around him?

A hand shoved against his back and Umber was moving again. "What--" He glanced over his shoulder and saw nothing there. Not disembodied hand, no figure. Just the rushing water still moving towards him.

Umber returned his attention to the red emerald ahead of him. His jets chugged, like they were working too hard to keep Umber going. His knees ached and he just wanted that damn chaos emerald!

And his hands reached out, skimming the emerald's surface, before closing around it.

His knees hit the hard surface of the ruins' floor. Umber let out a quiet hysterical laugh: He made it out. His hands shook for a long moment before he braced them against the stone of the ruins.

He was alive, and he was, for once, glad for it. Umber hid his red chaos emerald away with the blue and stood up. Giving the area a quick look over, he realized he was no longer in the same area he had started in.

Knuckles was nowhere to be found and below the platform he now stood on, a group of Black Arms were huddled. Without thinking about it, Umber knelt down and peered over the edge into the courtyard. The Black Arms seemed to be waiting for something, but Umber couldn't tell what that was.

Until Eclipse stepped out into the open from within an ancient tower Umber had literally only just noticed. The Black Arms patted himself down and said, "Well, that's all the generators! You lot should report this to Father: Umber and I set these generators on!"

The group of Black Arms dispersed on Eclipse's command. Umber watched as they scattered to the four winds and wondered: If they were supposed to be giving Black Doom a report, why would they scatter? Did they just want to look dramatic?

He pursed his lips as he watched Eclipse move below him. A part of him wanted to simply leave. There was no longer anything pulling on him to stay here and he did have a second chaos emerald. Only five left and then maybe he could figure out what to do with himself.

And yet... Umber huffed under his breath before flipping down into courtyard. He wasn't going to help the Black Arms so he should be clear about that to Eclipse. Even if he still felt like he'd try to rip Umber apart for it.

"Eclipse." He spoke, voice level.

Said alien turned on his heel, looking surprised to see him. "Umber? Why are you here? Didn't I say to stay where it was safe?" Eclipse asked.

Umber snorted internally. How was that place meant to be safe? "I grew...bored of just standing around doing nothing. Eclipse..." He tilted his chin up to meet the tall Black Arms' gaze. "You do realize I want nothing to do with Black Doom and the Black Arms, right?"

Eclipse stared at him before snorting out a laugh. "Don't be silly, brother! Of course you do! You're just...misled right now. Like Shadow. But it's fine: Shadow will see the error of his ways as will you." He nodded to himself.

He stiffened up his shoulders, muscles tense. That was far more ominous than Umber was comfortable with. "And what's that supposed to mean?" Umber asked.

"Simple!" Eclipse clapped his hands and a Black Arms crawled out from beneath the ruins. "Black Tiger will test you to see if you deserve further chances!" He beamed at Umber as if he was giving Umber a gift.

Umber backed away as Eclipse bounced up to the platform Umber had been standing on just moments before. The Black Arms approaching barely looked anything like a feral tiger. While it did walk on four legs and have stripes, that was where the similarities ended. Each of its four limbs were misshapen with massive claws jutting out of their feet. The long tail looked more like a scorpion's than a feline's, another deadly claw hanging from it..

It didn't really have a face, either. It was just one eye and a massive hole of teeth.

They exchanged snarls as Eclipse clapped from above. "I have full faith you'll win, Umber! But I need to speak with Father. I'll return after."

Eclipse leapt out of sight from the platform. Umber didn't watch him go, busy as he was on keeping Black Tiger in his sights. Its tail swung back and forth before lashing out at Umber.

It swept past Umber's ears as he dove to the ground. Rolling across the ground, Umber used his hands to cartwheel forward. He intended to kick the thing in the face but thought better of it as teeth glinked at him.

Where could he hit it that wouldn't tear him up?

Umber bared his teeth in a snarl. The Black Tiger snarled back, claws digging through the stone. Diving under the claws, he knocked the nearest claw away from his face. Those claws were intensely sharp--in fact...he could try using them to beat the Black Tiger.

He narrowed his eyes. But even with how sharp those claws were, Umber was sure that he wouldn't be able turn those claws on it. The legs were too short and with only one claw jutting out of its terrible paws for feet there was no way he could get it to claw itself.

Which left the tail.

The tail was swift and deadly, though. Umber had no idea how he would get it to hurt itself with its own tail. It seemed impossible. He grimaced at the thought as said tail swung back to attack him again.

The dangling claw clanged against the stone as Umber dodged to the right. He narrowed his eyes as he watched the tail retract. Could he trap that tail somehow? It seemed like something easy to do but he could hardly be certain.

Maybe...He looked at the tower Eclipse had left behind. Either he could trap it inside and crush it by felling the tower or he could simply tie its tail up somehow. Doing it would be more difficult than just thinking it but what choice did he have?

It's not like Umber was alright with dying here.

He dove for the tower, his rocket jets flaring behind him as they turned on. Umber skidded across the ground and rolled to a stop just inside the tower. There had to be something inside--There!! A broken pillar near the entrance. All he had to do was trick the Black Tiger to get around it somehow...

Speaking of, the alien leapt into the tower, its claws clicking and clacking against the stone. Umber knelt down next to the pillar and threw a rock at the Black Tiger's head. Was it too soon to repeat his complaint about not being able to use Chaos Spear? Because he'd really like to be able to use that right now.

The Black Arms tumbled towards him. Umber backed away and around the pillar. It's hole of a mouth dripped something like salvia onto the ground. Ignoring his queasy stomach, Umber tackled the tail and dove under the Black Tiger's stomach.

One of the massive claws nicked across his face and he hissed sharply at the streak of pain. Something warm dribbled down the side of his muzzle yet he kept his grip on the tail, jerking it tight around the pillar.

The Black Tiger shrieked and Umber scowled. Enough was enough: He plunged the tip of the tail into the softest bit of the alien he could spot and tumbled away. The alien gurgled, acidic green blood pooling out of the wound around its body.

Gross. He rubbed at the scratch across his face, ignoring the sting from his arm. Chaos, that had been a disaster. If he hadn't been alone--Umber flinched.

Alright. Fine. He shouldn't have left Rouge and Omega behind. Umber shouldn't have left Knuckles behind, either. Fighting alongside him had made the fights up to the grayed out red star ring easy, instead of dangerous. If he'd had back up here, he knew that the Black Tiger wouldn't have stood a chance.

But...he'd done this to himself, hadn't he. He was the one leaving people behind.

"Too late for regrets." Umber muttered to himself sternly. "You made your bed: Now lie in it."

He dug out one of the emeralds from his quills. The blue one glimmered in his hand as he lifted it into the sun's dying rays. "Chaos Control!" He declared, not really thinking about a destination.

Umber just wanted _away_ from here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> umber: i can't do Friends  
> knuckles: hey  
> umber:  
> umber: shit he's nice


	6. sh; clowning around

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> s i g h s
> 
> umber's next chapter has been giving me great difficulties so I decided to just. finally post this chapter as it's been sitting and waiting for that ch to be done.
> 
> further notes at the bottom
> 
> unbeta`d

From miles away, Westopolis looked more like a distant bonfire party instead of an invaded city. Or perhaps a bonfire party that went out of control. Either way: It didn't look nearly as dangerous as Shadow knew it was.

He sighed and looked away from the broken city. His apartment was probably in flames. It left him more than a little angry. That was his new home and it had just been destroyed. Why did those Black Arms think he'd want anything to do with them after all that?

Shadow skated further down the broken highway, leaping across the holes through it. There was a plume of smoke nearby and, whatever it was, it drew Shadow towards it. The closer he got, the more familiar the feeling got. Like...chaos, perhaps?

Ducking down beneath a broken bridge, Shadow spotted the source of the smoke plume. It was a fallen Black Arms aircraft. It looked more like a helicopter than the tank-like one they'd fought before. Whatever he was sensing was definitely in there.

He hurried his way down the hill towards the broken aircraft. Once he was at its side, Shadow pushed several of the metal pieces away to look inside. A chaos emerald, its color a lovely shade of green, sat inside a glass tube. It looked like it had been used as a power source, perhaps?

Or maybe that had just been their plan for it.

Shadow crushed the glass beneath his hand and pulled the emerald free from within. Chaos energy sparked through his arm and he shivered. At least the pulling feeling seemed to have stopped--for now. It might just come back again, as it had after they had found and defeated the aircraft-tank.

Stepping out of the wreckage, Shadow's ears flicked. Carnival music was drifting around him, as if following the wind down to him. Because the sound was definitely come from up.

He looked up and stared. Was that...Eggman? The Doctor's logo was proudly displayed on the sides of the...Shadow didn't know what to call it. Carnival ship, perhaps? That would have to work for now.

What was it even doing? It seemed fairly benign for something of his making. As Shadow watched it travel, he noted that small pinpricks of gold light were flicking upwards and into the carnival ship. Those had to be rings.

...Was Eggman abducting rings?

It sounded incredibly insane: Why would anyone want to take rings? They were just chaos energy that floated around in ring form. Most of the time they just vanished after a couple of hours of floating around. Eggman wouldn’t get anything out of it that he couldn’t also do with a single chaos emerald.

Shadow frowned. He had bigger fish to fry, with the Black Arms, right now than the Doctor. He was about to turn around and leave when he spotted something blue traveling through the ruddy red sky. Was that the Tornado? It looked like it, but...

He wasn't too familiar with Tails' plane beyond the fact that he loved the thing dearly. If it was the Tornado, then it could only be Tails flying it. But what in the world was Tails doing in the middle of all of this?

Before he had much of a chance to think about it further, something exploded against the blue plane's side. It wavered in the air before it started descending. No--That was a crash. And it was going to crash right into the Carnival Ship.

"I should've let Sonic come." Shadow muttered to himself. Tails...if his plane crashed there, he'd be in trouble.

...Damn it. Shadow couldn't leave this alone. Tossing his new emerald from hand to the other, he concentrated. All he had to do was teleport from here--to up _there_. "Chaos Control!"

His air skates clicked against the metal surface of the structure. Shadow flinched as his ears were immediately assaulted by the sound of a carnival. He wrinkled his nose and hissed: It was far too loud for him to stand.

Ugh. Shadow shook his head. He had to ignore the sound so he could track down Tails. He looked up and spotted a trail of smoke drifting up into the sky. Is that where the Tornado crashed?

Well, it was worth a check.

Shadow took a running start and began skating as his air jets switched on. The doors ahead of him opened as if welcoming him and he slipped down a slope into the carnival of lights and sound. Chaos, this place was massive and it seemed as such for absolutely no reason.

Eggman's reasons for such massive scale projects never made much sense. Shadow huffed and bounced up one of the pads to an upper area. The first eggpawn he encountered was happily bouncing around the platform he'd landed on. It didn't even look at him when he approached it.

Was it not hostile? That didn't seem right, considering how gung-ho previous eggpawns and badniks were to take his head off on his previous adventure. Shadow sidestepped the eggpawn and walked across the platform.

He took a moment to take the area in: Colorful lights of all sorts blinked and flashed around him. The ship on the inside was splashed with purples and oranges. Why purple, Shadow would probably never know. And there were bounce pads and grind rails as far as he could see.

Which was actually the majority of the carnival ship, he realized.

A gun clicked behind him and he spun on his heel. The eggpawn that had been happily bouncing along was now pointing a machine gun at Shadow. He fell into a ready stance, to dodge to the left to avoid the shots when something fell from above.

Whatever it was, it had apparently decided that the eggpawn was a perfect landing point. Especially for the fairly large orange and yellow lance now pierced through the broken eggpawn. Shadow stared because--he hadn't even heard anything approach. Either the noise of the carnival was gettign to him or something else was wrong.

"Oof...Are you okay?" Someone asked and Shadow turned slightly: The speaker, it turned out, was Tails. He looked just as surprised as Shadow felt to see him. "Shadow?? What're you doing here? I thought you were in Westopolis..."

Shadow blinked once. Tails must've seen the fires in Westopolis and assumed he and Sonic had it handled. Which he wasn't wrong about, but Shadow thought that maybe Tails shouldn't have gone off on his own. After all, the last time he'd gone out on his own with no back up he'd broken his leg.

He glanced over his shoulder: This time, it seemed he'd crashed his plane.

"Hey." Shadow jolted briefly and looked down at Tails. The nine year old raised his eyebrows at Shadow. "What's going on with Westopolis?" Tails tilted his chin to meet Shadow’s gaze.

How does one explain that mess... "Some sort of invasion," Shadow said, "Everyone has been evacuated. It doesn't seem like they care much about them leaving..." What had Doom's Eye mentioned they needed again? Something...about Shadow helping them with something.

Oh, right. The Chaos Emeralds. They had claimed the chaos emeralds were theirs and that Shadow was supposed to deliver them to the Black Arms. A claim he still refused to believe was true.

The one thing the Professor had never done was lie to him. Or--Well, he didn't lie to him about things he wanted Shadow to do. He'd lied about Maria's wish, Shadow would acknowledge that, but...Gerald Robotnik had changed after her death. The man Shadow had known before Maria's death wouldn't have lied to him or made promise about him without telling him.

(Right?)

"So they want something that doesn't involve the people who live here?" Tails frowned, his hands on his hips as he tapped one foot. It was such a Sonic pose that Shadow smiled for a moment. "But what could it be...?"

Shadow hummed to himself, one hand on his chin. "...They might be after the Chaos Emeralds. I found a crashed Black Arms ship that had an emerald inside." He still wasn't sure who broke it, but it was likely a air strike from GUN that took the airship down.

Tails looked up. "Black Arms?" He asked.

He gestured towards Westopolis. "The invaders," Shadow said, "Now what's going on here? Eggman is clearly up to something..."

It was obvious the fox wasn't pleased by Shadow's change in subject but let it go. He crossed his arms and tapped one finger against his cheek. "Well, I got an alert from the monitor programs I snuck into Eggman's servers after the whole Metal Sonic thing. Apparently he thought he could replicate the power of a chaos emerald by collecting rings from across the world." Tails explained.

"...It'd take quite a lot of rings to do that." Shadow pointed out.

That set Tails off. He started laughing before coughing and hiding his mouth behind his hand. "S-sorry." Tails mumbled. "Yeah. You're right. You'd think Eggman would realize that, considering he's supposed to be smart."

He rolled his eyes and glanced towards the smoke plume Shadow had been following. "Were you trying to find out if there were Black Arms here?" Tails asked.

Shadow shook his head. He turned towards the plume fully, his back to Tails. "I saw you crash so I figured I'd follow you. Last time you went off on your own, you broke your leg." Shadow glanced back at Tails over his shoulder.

Tails pouted. "Well that's not entirely true! I went on my own for a little bit when Miss Vanilla was kidnapped by Eggman. Remember?"

Had he? Shadow didn't know much about that adventure because he'd been so busy getting his ID in order. It's not like he had any actual birth certificates considering he was created on a space station. The president of the United Federation was quick to solve that for him, though.

Most of what he did know, he'd heard from Amy when she'd come to visit.

"For a little bit, though." Shadow pointed out. "I'm assuming Sonic hunted you down and followed you around the rest of the time?" He turned his gaze ahead of him again and started walking.

He could hear the pout in Tails' voice. "Sonic was being way too over protective..." Tails grumbled.

Fair. Shadow knew that Sonic hadn't been comfortable with leaving Tails alone after he broke his leg during the adventure with Metal Sonic. When Shadow had started living with them for those first couple months, Shadow had been quick to notice how Sonic would hover over Tails if he didn't know the fox was with Shadow. Or Knuckles. Or Amy.

...Alright, so Sonic had been calmer about it when he knew Tails was with someone else. That didn't change much when most of the time it had just been Sonic and Tails in their house. Shadow had been the only that stayed with them on a consistent basis and even that had only been a couple of months.

Tails had probably gone crazy with Sonic's over protective behavior. Which was ironic considering he'd gone and hurt himself less than an hour ago. Honestly, it was annoying and frustrating that the hedgehog would be so over protective of others but was so careless with his own health. What a moron.

"Either way, I suppose we should finish off whatever the Doctor has planned here, hm?" Shadow stopped at the edge of the platform, peering down at the eggpawns and bird shaped badniks below. Hm, that one looked like a performing clown atop that spiked ball.

Ah. Spikes. That was a spiked ball.

There was a sigh from the fox. "Yeah, I guess." Tails popped up at Shadow's elbow before they both dove down towards the eggpawns and badniks below. He bounced past Shadow and began smashing two of the badniks.

Shadow on the other hand swept a discarded lance from the ground. He twirled it with his hands and attacked the clown eggpawn. Knocking it off the ball, Shadow pinned the ball in place before he threw a chaos spear into the head of the clown eggpawn.

He huffed sharply before spinning. Shadow had to stop himself from throwing a chaos spear as he spotted Tails in between him and a badnik. It was the last one actually, Shadow realized.

At least that left them with nothing to fight in this area. He narrowed his eyes. Why in the world was Eggman doing this anyway? He should know that just gathering a bunch of rings wouldn't equal a chaos emerald, even if you gathered all of them in the world.

While they were made of chaos energy, they faded too quickly for them to be used like an emerald. Even if you stored them properly, they faded within a week. It was why places that relied on ring energy were constantly collecting them.

"Any ideas on how to ruin this plan of the Doctor's?" Shadow asked. Tails seemed like the type to have a plan before he did something.

Tails hesitated and Shadow internally deadpanned. Did he really not have a plan for this? "Well...I figured I'd just break the containers and drop the ship to the ground?" Tails offered.

That wasn't a plan.

Shadow said as much and the fox flushed in embarrassment. "I--It's a plan that'd work!" Tails defended himself, crossing his arms.

"Just because it might work doesn't mean you should go with it." Shadow grumbled turning his gaze to the nine year old.

He just pouted at Shadow and grumbled something about how it worked for Sonic. Shadow rolled his eyes. Sonic was not a good example about what you should do about plans.

Honestly.

Shadow shook his head. "I suppose we don't have any other plan. We'll just have to go with that." Shadow suggested.

Tails took to the air and nodded in agreement. "Yeah, let's go! How many of those ring canisters do you think we can blow sky high?" Tails asked.

"...Why not get to the command room and set them to open on their own?" Shadow asked, jerking his chin towards the center of the carnival. Yes, they could destroy the ship afterwards, but it would be more efficient not to track down all the ring containers at the same time.

The fox stared before he clued in, looking stunned. "Oh. That's a good idea." Tails seemed surprised by the plan but also pleased by it as well.

Shadow resisted his urge to snort. Hadn't it been Tails idea for them to look for the computer rooms in Eggman's bases during the Metal Sonic incident? That's what he remembered at least.

Plan set, the two headed further into the carnival. Shadow wrinkled his nose at the sounds and lights: It was overbearing. Did the Doctor really think people liked this sort of thing? Unless it was what he liked.

...Yeah, that's probably it.

Shadow leapt down a ravine, landing on a bounce pad that rocketed him up to a grind rail. He heard Tails just behind him and he wondered if the fox was used to following others. Tails seemed to be nigh inseparable from Sonic, most of the time.

He briefly wondered where that had started but let it go. Right now he had to focus on the computer room. Shadow landed with ease on another platform, a hoard of butterfly shaped badniks zooming towards him.

Tails bounced over him and across two of the butterfly badniks. He landed behind the hoard and used his tails to whip a couple more badniks. Shadow punched the nearest badnik into pieces, a flower popping out of it.

Yeah, okay. Sure, that seems normal. At this point Shadow had gone through enough crazy nonsense that a robot being powered by a flower wasn't that strange. Becoming super powered and fighting your own prototype was stranger.

"Where do you think the computer room is anyway?" Shadow called out as he kicked another badnik into pieces.

The fox landed after another tail spin hit. "It'll probably be the most obnoxious place here." Tails shouted back as he ducked under the last badnik.

Shadow snatched it out of the air and smashed across the ground. His lips pulled back in a sneer. "You mean everywhere," He said.

Tails snorted and started laughing. He ruffled his bangs and said, "T-that's true. But, uh. I'm pretty sure it's going to be a center of the ship. At least, the one that controls the canisters at least."

That wasn't supposed to be a joke, but Shadow decided it wasn't worth correcting Tails' laughter. Besides, he wasn't wrong about the room likely being in the center of the carnival ship. Eggman was particularly predictable that way.

He nodded to Tails before leaping ahead. The first platform he landed on after his jump was a clock set into the floor. At least, Shadow thought it was a clock. It sure did look like one.

"I think it's a ring winning game," Tails said, standing at Shadow's elbow.

Shadow looked down with a startled look. He hadn't realized Tails was right there. "We'll just skip it." Shadow responded, pulling his gaze back up towards the strange gate at the far end of the platform.

"Wait--!" He ignored Tails' protest until he walked into what felt like a pool of electricity. The electricity arced across his limbs and he shuddered, falling back.

He stayed still there on the ground for a good few moments, irrational fury rising in him. This was so stupid: Why should he play along with Eggman's games? Shadow didn't have time to mess around in his games!

...Why didn't he have time?

Shadow looked up as Tails stopped just over his head. "I think we need to win the game." Tails told him, looking down at him.

Closing his eyes, Shadow let out all his fury in one big gusty sigh. He said, "And what do you think we need to do to win?"

Tails hummed and nodded. "I have no idea! Let's try making it start and figure it out if we don't get it right the first time." He bounced out of sight as Shadow sat up.

Reckless, Shadow thought. He smoothed out his quills before stepping up next to where Tails was. Tails was studying something in the center of the clock structure. It was a panel with a single button on it.

"We just need to push this button and start the game." Tails finally declared, patting the panel lightly.

Shadow resisted his urge to point out that that was obvious. Where else would you activate this machine? There weren't any other buttons or levers in sight.

Instead, he said, "What are we waiting for then? We should get this over with."

He laughed as if what Shadow had said was funny. Shadow...really didn't understand humor on Gaia. "Yes, we can do that." Tails nodded and pressed the button.

Almost instantly sound roared around them, lights flashing, and Doctor Eggman's voice echoed. "To complete these game, you have to get enough points by destroying the balloons! Here is your point tracker! If you lose, it will be rather explosive." The announcement cut off with raucous laughter.

Shadow wanted to punch Eggman right then.

"These things?" Tails grabbed one of the two arm bands that had popped out of the pedestal. He eyed them warily before he grabbed the other and held it out to Shadow.

He also gave it a wary stare before he took it. Shadow attached the arm band to his wrist just above the cuffs of his glove. The numbers displayed on the arm band were two zeros, in bright orange.

"Game will begin in..." A robotic voice called out. "One...Two...Three...Go!"

More music rang out around them. Balloons popped out from some point around the clock's edge. Shadow pulled his chaos emerald free and fired a chaos spear at the orange balloon. A click from his wrist and the orange numbers changed to '01'.

Right then. The goal was to destroy the balloons. Shadow can do that, easy. He threw a few more chaos spears into the balloons around the platform. A couple that popped seemed to give him a couple more points than the others. He couldn't tell what the difference was between them.

Behind him, Tails yelped. Instinctively, Shadow turned and caught the fox as he fell. Tails squeaked a thank you before taking to the air again. He turned away from Tails and returned to throwing chaos spears. Shadow didn't even look at his counter to check his score: He was too focused on popping as many as he could.

Shadow popped two last balloons when a shrill alarm echoed across the platform. He jolted and stepped backwards and almost tripped over one of the stationary clock hands. The balloons that hadn't been popped vanished up towards the cloudy red sky and no more came out of the edges of the platform.

"Do you think we won?" Tails wondered out loud, fiddling with his counter band. "I mean...we had to have, right? We popped most of them...Unless there were ones we weren't supposed to pop?"

He was tempted to ask Tails if that was what had caused him to fall out of the air. Yet Shadow let the thought drift away on the wind like the balloons instead said, "The counters must mean something."

Tails tilted his head. "The what?" He asked.

Sighing with barely hid annoyance, Shadow tapped a finger against the counter. "The bands. What else would I be talking about?" Shadow wrinkled his nose in distaste.

That just seemed to make Tails roll his eyes. "Okay, okay. I think we just need to put them back." Tails took his off and slipped out back onto the display he'd taken both of them off of.

Fiddling with his for a moment, Shadow eventually took it off. He put it on the second display and stepped back. The display chirped and pulled the two bands in and they waited. Shadow wasn't sure what exactly they were waiting for, if he was honest.

"Congratulations!!" The robotic voice declared. "You've won! Passage forward has been opened and you have also won Ring Canister Four."

The middle where the platform was opened up on top and a bubble with a ring sign on it popped up. Tails cheered and snatched it up. He shook it for a moment, his eyes closed as he seemed to be thinking.

Tails nodded. "Yeah, there's like...a thousand rings in here," He said.

That was a _disgusting_ amount of rings. Especially when one thought about how some places on Gaia used rings as a currency. "Is that about how much you expected?" Shadow asked, turning towards their passage to the computer room.

"No, actually. I...expected more, considering how long this place has been moving. There's more to it than just that, but I guess the other rings are probably in the rest of the ring canisters." Tails scratched at his head before he broke the canister's bubble and absorbed the rings within it.

Shadow hummed softly before he started for the arch of a gate that had previously shocked him. He stuck his hand through the gate first. When no streak of electricity tried to shock him he nodded in relief before passing the rest of the way through.

Tails popped up at his elbow a second later. He didn't say a word--he just glanced up at Shadow as if waiting for him to take the lead. Shadow tilted his chin in a nod down at the fox before rushing forward. His skates clicked once as he landed on the path below before the air jets turned on, his chaos energy swirling through.

Several more eggpawns and badniks stood in their way. He had to admit, the badniks tended to be a little more dangerous than the eggpawns. Only the specialty eggpawns seemed more deadly. His spin dashes still tended to take care of them quicker than stealing their weapons seemed to.

Granted, spearing an eggpawn on its own lance was satisfying in a way spin dashing it wasn't.

Shadow dashed up to a near vertical path and bounced up using one of the bounce pads at the bottom. He landed with ease at the top, patting his quills down. Beside him, Tails landed, having never set foot on the ground thanks to his speed in the air.

Hm. Shadow was about to ask how he was actually able to fly with his tails but was interrupted by the gunfire from some eggpawns. He immediately grabbed Tails and fell, alarm klaxons roaring in his ears. Swallowing his instinctive call for Maria, Shadow turned his gaze on the eggpawns. He bared his teeth and jumped to his feet.

He let Tails go before leaping to his feet and cartwheeling between two of the clown eggpawns. Shadow kicked one of the spiked balancing balls, causing it to roll out from beneath the eggpawn standing on it. It fell to the crowd and the other eggpawn started rolling closer to Shadow. He leapt over the fallen eggpawn and kicked it under the rolling ball.

It crunched beneath the ball and the eggpawn chasing Shadow didn't slow down for even a moment. He rolled backwards and onto his feet, rushing back to get himself a good vantage point to tackle the eggpawn from the ball once more. Shadow barely flinched at the impact against the eggpawn's chassis. They both tumbled off the spiked ball, which disappeared over the edge.

Tails zipped over head as Shadow wrestled with the eggpawn. He didn't see what Tails did as he finally crushed the eggpawn's head under foot. Shadow let out a sharp breath and turned towards the fox as he heard something exploded. There was no reason to worry, though: The explosion had come from Tails as he had blown a badnik that had fallen from above somehow.

Right, Shadow wasn't going to ask.

Yet with their latest foes taken out, Shadow decided that they could chaos control the rest of the way. "Tails." Shadow gestured at the younger. "Do you want to Chaos Control the rest of the way?"

He blinked at Shadow, as if confused. "Chaos Control? But...we're almost there? Couldn't we have done it earlier, also?"

"...I need to be able to see it or know the coordinates to chaos control there safely." Like how he had known the ARK and could thus teleport there from practically anywhere. And now that they were so close to the tower, Shadow could reliably teleport in without getting them hurt or killed in the process.

Tails stared at him for a long moment before leaning forward, interest sparked. Oh, bad idea, Shadow realized. He'd managed to get Tails' interest in regards to Chaos Control. He's not going to get away later without explaining something of Chaos Control, was he?

As if his thought had summoned Tails' curiosity, the fox said, "So because you know where the computer room is approximately you can now chaos control there?" His eyes sparkled with interest.

Shadow sighed internally. Here we go. "Yes. If I don't know the coordinates, the only way is to either know where I'm going already or to be able to comprehend where my destination is." Shadow knew that he needed to get into the computer room of the carnival ship, had seen generally where it was located. He could teleport there, so long as he had a Chaos Emerald.

Lo and behold, he still had the green emerald with him.

"So we can make it there now? With Chaos Control?" Tails lead forward, smiling eagerly. He looked so excited about the possibility of Chaos Control that Shadow realized he couldn't deny him.

(It was the same type of expression Maria used to get about things that she wanted to learn. Shadow had never been able to tell her no either. Even when he really should've.)

If he was honest, he was still a little surprised Tails hadn't interrogated him about Chaos Control when Shadow still lived with him and Sonic. Shadow sighed. "Yes, we can." 

Tails bounced on the heels of his feet. "Okay! How do we do this?" He asked.

Shadow held out his hand. "It's simple," The dark hedgehog said, "Just hold my hand and I'll handle the rest."

The fox briefly made a 'do I have to?' face before taking his hand. Shadow nodded once and pulled out his own emerald, holding it up so the light refracted through it. He pulled at the energy within and said, "Chaos Control."

He stumbled slightly as he and Tails appeared inside the central tower. It seemed like they'd appeared in some hallway within the tower. Shadow let go of Tails' hand and turned around. This didn't look much like any of the other bases Shadow had been in so far, but he'd freely admit he didn't have that much knowledge of the Doctor's bases.

Behind him, Tails hummed as he looked around the hallways. He passed by Shadow to peer down the hallways branching off from theirs.

After a couple of moments, he nodded once. "Okay, so this is modeled like one of his older bases. I guess he thought it'd throw us off." He scratched at his head with a small frown. "Kind of dumb....These old layout wasn't a good one. It's like a maze: I have no idea how Eggman finds anything like this."

"So we have no clues to the computer room." Shadow deadpanned.

Tails shrugged. "Sort of? I think I can figure out a way to get there, but you'll have to follow my lead."

* * *

Shadow leaned against the wall of the computer room, watching Tails work. His decision to follow Tails as he had requested turned out to be a good idea. Tails had found the computer room they needed within an hour, which would've taken shadow much longer

And considering he wanted to keep moving, to track the Black Arms as soon as this was finished? It meant that they needed the rings back as quickly as possible.

Ever since they'd arrived, Tails had been attached to the computer. His fingers moved almost too fast for Shadow to track as he tapped away at the keyboard. The screens flashed, files opening and closing. Shadow caught a few: One about the E-Series and another about the Badnik 02 series. There weren't any others he caught quickly enough to know what it was about beyond technical nonsense.

He tilted his chin down with a sigh. Shouldn't he have found the blueprints to this place already? Or did Eggman not have the blueprints anymore?

As if to answer his unvoiced question, Tails cheered. "I found it!" He started tapping at the screen as a map appeared, showing the circuitry of the carnival ship.

Blue lines spread out from the central tower: There were five main ones, though only three of them seemed to be lit up right now. Why wasn't the one they had challenged being powered?

Tails nodded. "Okay, so the lit up lines show where the Ring Canisters are being powered. It looks like the one we got has already been powered down because it doesn't have any rings right now."

"And how do we release the canisters from here?" Shadow asked, pushing off from the wall. He walked closer to look up at the map better.

Frowning, Tails started flicking through commands. Eventually, he shook his head. "It looks like the only thing I can do here is turn the ring collection off. Eggman must've made it so he can only release them at one of his bases." Tails clicked his tongue.

Shadow frowned. That did seem like something he would do. "You aren't able to cirumvent the commands the Doctor put in?" He asked with a small frown.

He shook his head. "No. I can keep looking, but right now I'd say no." Tails continued to tap away at the keyboard and Shadow turned away. He didn't know how to respond to that.

The two of them continued in silence for a few minutes. Tails was still intensely studying the screen, as if it would change if he stared at it long enough. Shadow jolted as Tails suddenly banged his fists on the edge of the keyboard.

"Tails." Shadow muttered.

The fox shook his head. "Sorry," Tails said, "I'm just--I can usually break Eggman's systems. The fact that I can't this time is frustrating."

Shadow tilted his head and watched Tails' expression change from frustrated to tired to determined. Tails nodded to himself and let out a sharp sigh. "Alright. We'll have to take out the other three ring canisters and this place should power down."

"Alright. That works well enough for me." Shadow muttered.

They exchanged looks and Tails stepped away from the keyboard. The two of them left the computer room and Tails led them back towards the hallway they'd started in. Or so Shadow assumed: Most of the hallways looked exactly the same to him.

Tails stopped out of nowhere. Shadow stopped just behind him and said, "...Yes?"

He shook his head. "Sorry!" Tails dusted off his gloves. "Uh...maybe we should teleport back to where we were before? It might be easier to get to the other stations from there." He looked up at Shadow, eager again.

Yeah, he really liked Chaos Control, huh? Shadow held out his hand and Tails eagerly took it. With a slight roll of his eyes, Shadow muttered a 'Chaos Control' and they teleported out of the hallway.

Shadow glanced around the area as he let Tails' hand go. Last time they'd been here, Shadow hadn't taken a note of his surroundings. A rookie mistake, but he was addressing it now.

Despite the colorful lights and facade of a carnival, he realized their surroundings were a lot more industrial than he had first noted. Beneath the brilliant paints and decorations, cold sheet metal glinted at them. Even worse than that was, if he strained his ears, he could hear metal shrieking as it was pulled against another piece of metal.

Even if he wasn't currently oversensitive to everything, that shrill screeching sound was giving him a headache. His ears flattened against his head and he huffed. Right, there was nothing he could do to stop the pain for now.

Shadow would just have to power through it.

"Shadow? Which was do you think we should go?" Tails asked, looking back and forth to the two different grind rails. He was clearly indecisive.

He tilted his chin to look down at the fox before looking to their right. That area seemed a little more lively: Normally, that'd mean Shadow would want to walk in the opposite direction. Socialiatation gave him hives and loud activity usually meant people.

In this case? The loud activity and sounds meant there was likely that it was being powered in a way the other side wasn't. And the map had said that the third challenge platform was the nearest one with power, after all.

Logical.

"That way." The dark hedgehog nodded in the direction of the light and sound. Shadow tapped one skate against the platform before he started skating towards the grind rails. Once he was hit the right speed, he threw himself onto the rails and started grinding along.

He leaned down and skimmed the rail behind him with one hand. There as something about doing that he did genuinely enjoy. Not that he could really explain why, just that he did.

Oh, well. Shadow shrugged to himself. He didn't have to explain that to anyone except himself. And he didn't need an explanation.

Shadow ducked under a pair of flashing lights. The grind rail was rapidly coming an end and he narrowed his eyes at the end. Alright: He knew what to do. The moment his feet reached the end of the rail, he used it was a launch pad to throw himself to the new platform.

Not great leverage, but it was better than nothing.

His skates clicked as he landed, the air jets sparking for a moment before powering down. Next to him, Tails landed with his tails whipping behind him. Ahead of them was another clock light platform, similar to the first ring challenge they'd come across.

Tails hurried ahead and said, "We should probably try and see if this one is powered. It if isn't we have to go to another platform." Shadow could _hear_ the annoyed expression in the fox's voice.

The dark hedgehog followed as Tails bopped the button on the stand in the middle of the platform. While he picked the bands out of the stand, Shadow peered down at the clock's face. There were several square indents across the face, almost like they were sliding doors.

"Here, Shadow," Tails said, tossing a band to Shadow. They both slipped them on, with Shadow hovering suspiciously near one of the indents. He did not like that indent, whatsoever.

With his hand hovering over the button, Tails looked at Shadow. "Are you ready?" He asked.

Shadow nodded once, one hand held up to summon a chaos spear to pop the balloons that would not doubt spawn. Tails swatted the start button and the robotic voice spoke up. "Ring Challenge number Three: Start in three...two...one! Begin!"

And then the indents opened and badniks popped out of them.

He was so startled by the appearance, Shadow's chaos spear vanished. The badnik shaped like a feral monkey swung a fist at Shadow's face. Shadow dodged back as the fist whooshed passed his face. He dodged back, watching as it pulled out what looked like a coconut bomb.

Before it could throw it, what looked like a ring canister flew past Shadow's ear and exploded in the badnik's face. It collapsed in pieces and the coconut bomb fell back and rolled towards the next badnik. It exploded, taking out the second badnik's legs.

Wait...was this a battle challenge? Shadow huffed and summoned two chaos spears, smirking at the badniks bouncing out of the hole. He could worry about the exploding ring canister later. For now? It was time to destroy the badniks and eggpawns.

Shadow kicked an eggpawn off the edge of the platform and turned in place, throwing a chaos spear to end a flying badnik. Tails bounced passed him, smashing a badnik's head in with his foot. He caught Tails' hand before the fox fell over the edge of the platform.

"Throw me to that one!" Tails yelled, pointing to a bee shaped badnik high in the air.

He nodded and threw the fox at the bee badnik. Tails spin in air and smashed the badnik midair with his tails. He drifted lazily down toward the clock platform, his shoes clicking as he landed. Shadow nodded briefly and spun around to take off an eggpawn's head with a kick.

Another badnik popped out of the clock face, bouncing towards him. Shadow threw a chaos spear through it and spring boarded over an eggpawn. He crushed that very same eggpawn in the next moment, rolling with the motion of the small explosion. Shadow pushed himself back up to his feet and turned to survey the other combatants on the platform.

Shadow slid across the platform and kicked one the ball of a clown eggpawn. It rolled away, flailing its arms as it fell off the edge of the platform. He smirked before turning to Tails as the latter blew up a couple of monkey shaped badniks. He was starting to look tired and Shadow was hit by a thought: When was the last time he'd slept?

Before he could ask how many Tails had destroyed, the alarm rang out around them. Shadow immediately covered his ears and grimaced at the sound, Tails mimicking him. At least he was't the only one annoyed by the loud sounds.

"Is it over?" Tails wondered out loud.

He glanced at the arm band on his arm. The numbers of 21 flashed on it. "I believe so." Shadow responded.

Tails let out a sigh of relief. "Okay. Let's turn in the bands and see if we won this challenge." He accepted Shadow's band before taking off his own. Shadow peered back along the grind rails to seek out the next path as Tails returned the bands.

"Congratulations! You've won!" The robotic voice declared joyfully. "You've won the Full Ring Canister!"

A large ring canister popped out of the center of the clock platform. Tails picked it up and said, "Alright, we've got it. Let's see..." Tails tilted his head with a frown as he sensed the amount in the canister.

Shadow stepped back and crossed his arms as he waited for Tails to finish. Finally, the fox broke open the canister and absorbed the rings. "About three thousand rings, I think?," Tails said.

Three thousand rings was quite a lot, Shadow thought. What in the world was Eggman even planning with all of this? Rings were useless for anything besides damage protection and a form of a currency. He still didn't get the idea of using them as a source of power.

Apparently, Mobius primarily used rings as a power source for some reason or another.

It's not like he actually knew anything about Mobius, despite the fact that historically speaking, mobians are supposed to be from that continent. Shadow knew he should actually pay attention to his mobian heritage yet... Well, Shadow wasn't interested in that. It may technically be his to explore, but that didn't mean he had to.

(Alright, he's lying just a little bit. He was interested in Mobius, from what little tidbits he'd picked up from the people he'd met in the past few months. All of them, though, seemed hesitant to speak more of the place. Like it was a bad memory for them.

Shadow knew all about bad memories. He wasn't going to bring them back up.)

Tails patted himself briefly before he said, "Okay, I think I've got enough for more of my ring bombs." He looked pleased.

Ah, so that was where the ring canister bombs had come from. Shadow tilted his chin down towards Tails. "We should take care of the next ring challenge then."

He nodded in agreement and the two walked away from the clock platform. Shadow landed on the grind rails and zipped ahead. A couple of badniks stood in the way and he shot them down with his chaos spear.

Alright, time to keep grinding on.

* * *

Shadow ducked under a balloon as he landed on a grind rail. He leaned down to balance across the rail, his hand skimming across the rail. His band continued to click over and over again as he popped more and more of the balloons.

He squinted and leaned over the edge of the grind rail and landed on the lower rail. Immediately he began shooting the balloons down again. Careful, he thought to himself as he held back from blowing up the red balloons. The rules the challenge AI had told them said not to destroy the red balloons, lest they lose points.

"Hey, Shadow!" Tails landed on the grind rail above his head. "Time is almost up!"

Almost up, huh? He glanced down towards the clock platform and noted that the long hand had almost made a full trip around the platform. Shadow guessed that's where Tails got that idea from. "We need to keep going." He called back as his grind rail led away from Tails.

Tails cupped his hands around his mouth as he yelled; "Okay! I'll meet you back down there when we're done." He zoomed away on his rail, up towards the top of the rail mess.

The grind rails around the platform were truly a mess. There were probably at least three different rails that weren't connected whatsoever yet wrapped around one another. It was good for a challenge to get rings, but it didn't help him keep the routes straight whatsoever.

A bell rung out, followed by the robotic voice. "Challenge over! Please return the bands."

Shadow pursed his lips before jumping off the rail and skydiving down towards the center of the platform. He rolled as he hit the ground, stopping right at the spot where the arm bands popped out. Shadow stood up and tugged his arm band off to drop it on the return slot.

He heard someone land behind him and he backed away to allow Tails to deposit his own. Tails seemed pleased by his amount as he stared at the numbers on his arm band. Shadow...hadn't even looked at his own band whatsoever.

Tails dropped his band on the slot as well. It opened up and the two arm bands disappeared inside. "Counting..." The robotic voice intoned.

"I hope we got it..." Tails muttered.

 _So do I_ , Shadow thought. He did not want to have to re-pop all of those balloons. It would take far too long and he knew he didn't want to spend too much time on just this.

He...really needed to catch up to the Black Arms. They weren't waiting up on him and he didn't trust they weren't going to be destroying more cities. Shadow needed to know who they were, what they were, and more.

Because he can't trust that thing's word on him being 'created' for them.

"Shadow?" Tails' voice drew him out of his thoughts. Shadow glanced over at him. Tails tilted his head up at Shadow with a frown, clearly concerned about his silence.

Chaos, it wasn't that strange, right? Perhaps Tails was just used to Sonic's over enthusiastic personality. Shadow wasn't too eager to share how he felt with every single soul in the vicinity.

(Okay that wasn't fair. Sonic didn't always share every feeling he had. He was just more honest than Shadow, which he wasn't ashamed about admitting.)

He opened his mouth to calm Tails but was interrupted. "Congratulations!" The robotic AI spoke up over their voices. "Challenge complete! Ring Canister Two will now be administered!"

A ring canister popped out of the center of the platform. Tails caught it, studied it for a moment, and then tossed it to Shadow. He was surprised as he caught it, peering down into the clear casing.

"Why did you give me this?" He asked.

Tails hummed. "I already have almost five thousand. I think I can spare that three thousand." He smiled at the dark hedgehog.

Shadow ducked his head in acknowledgement. It was a fair point and he was running low--he only had maybe fifty rings on hand right now. If they had another battle challenge, the rings would be a good protection. He'd only be able to take five hits right now before he started getting actually hurt.

He snapped the canister and absorbed the rings. Three thousand rings was a much different weight than then couple hundred he was used to picking up. It wasn't that much of a different; it was like someone had put a day-bag on his shoulders.

With the rings absorbed, Shadow said, "Let's continue to the last platform." He turned around and prepared to start looking for the grind rail to the last challenge platform.

"Yeah..." Tails caught Shadow's head. "Um, Shadow? Can I talk to you about something first?"

Shadow paused before nodding. "...Yes, you can," He said.

Tails smiled and let Shadow's hand go. "Okay, so. It's sort of about that deal we made and something else too. Have you gotten anything about the service chao stuff yet?" The fox stepped passed Shadow, missing the face he'd made at the mention of the chao, and started looking for a grind rail forward as well.

"The forms are still processing." Probably because Shadow was technically still a criminal, for all that he'd gotten a pardon from his week working with Doctor Eggman.

He nodded at Shadow's answer. "Yeah, I figured. I just thought I'd ask, you know?" Tails knelt down to look over the edge of the platform. "And the other thing...Are you ever going to tell Sonic you have your memories back?"

What? Shadow frowned at Tails. He'd once blackmailed Shadow with that so he could go off and interfer in one of the Doctor's plans. Why would he be asking Shadow to tell sonic about it now?

"Why?" Shadow asked, turning away from Tails.

Tails sighed loudly. "Because Sonic is still worrying about it. It's starting to dive me nuts."

What? Shadow jerked his head to look towards Tails before turning his gaze away again. Sonic was worrying about it? He didn't seem the type to worry about a handful of missing memories.

"Why would he worry about it? It's only a few memories." Shadow shot back.

He watched out of the corner of his eye as Tails groaned loudly and bury his face in his hands. "For one, you're his friend. Sonic always worries about his friends, even if he isn't up front about it. And two, it's not just a couple of memories: it's a few days of memories, Shadow!"

Okay, fine, Shadow will give him...all of that. It's not like Tails was wrong. It was just strange to think about anyone other than Maria being worried about him. Back on the Ark, everyone had just treated him as some sort of invincible experiment.

Shadow pinched the bridge of his nose. "...I'll tell him about it after all of this is over," He said.

Tails beamed as he stood up. "Thanks, Shadow." He turned his back on Shadow and said, "Okay, I think this grind rail leads towards the next platform."

The grind rail in question wasn't lit up like every other grind rail had been: It was dark and almost entirely unnoticeable. No wonder they hadn't seen it right away.

They both turn to it and run at it. Speed was important, after all, when you were grinding. If you weren't fast enough, you'd just fall right off. Shadow didn't like the idea of breaking a bone here, just because he fell off a rail.

He dodged under the mess of grind rails for the ring challenge after he landed on the rail. Once they moved passed that mess, Shadow slid down towards the final platform. It was much larger than the previous ones, which explained why there was only five instead of an even six.

Shadow shook his head. "Why make this one so large?" He muttered to himself.

"To show off, maybe?" Tails replied, causing Shadow to tense for a moment. He hadn't even noticed Tails catching up to Shadow.

Tails smiled as he glanced up at him. "That's usually Eggman's MO. Showing off, I mean." He laughed.

He nodded slowly at Tails before moving towards the center of the platform. Tails activated the main platform; the lights at the edge of the platform flashing on as the band stand rose up from within.

The fox picked up both the bands and tossed one to Shadow. "Alright, you ready for this one?" Tails asked.

"Yes, I'll be fine." Shadow nodded as he wrapped the band on his arm. It couldn't be that bad, really. The other challenges had merely been mildly annoying, not dangerous.

 _Hm, famous last words_ grumbled a voice in his ear.

Shadow pursed his lips and shook his head. Focus on the now and not any sort of possible bad end for them. He huffed internally as the platform broke apart at the edges. Each broken piece rolled along the new edge of the platform to the farthest point away from the tower.

They clicked and clacked as they connected up into a larger robot. The robotic voice that had previously spoken up at the other platforms spoke up once more--from the robot itself. "Ring Challenge One!" The AI declared. "Defeat EggPanther!"

He thought, that thing looked nothing like a panther.

Tails went whizzing passed him as something exploded right in front of them. Shadow spun on his heel and watched as Tails disappeared over the edge of the platform. "Shoot!" He yelped as he rushed to the same edge.

Before he could look over the edge, Tails popped back up over the edge, flying. "Did you just say shoot?" Tails asked, looking like he really wanted to laugh.

"...Sonic got mad the last time I swore around you." Shadow grumbled, turning back towards the EggPanther. Okay, now it looked more like a panther, crouched down as it was.

Falling back down onto the platform, Tails jokingly said, "Oh, afraid of Sonic, are you?"

Shadow snorted as he dodged deadly claws. "Only when it comes to you." Sonic was _actually_ a little scary, when it came to Tails.

That just seemed to make the fox laugh more as he bounced off the robot's head. Tails was a lot hardier than Shadow thought: He kept underestimating Tails. At least he seemed alright. Shadow…really needed to learn to have some more faith in others.

He knew he was getting better at that. It didn't change the fact, though, that he was about to be squashed. Shadow dove to the ground as the large fist of the mech swung down towards him. He curled up and spun across the ground, to dodge a second blow from the opposite fist.

Cursing, Shadow spotted Tails bouncing up the arm towards the head. Carnival lights lined the head, lighting up a bright orange panel on the darker gray head of the mech. A memory from the adventure with Sonic and Silver floated to the surface; Sonic, mentioning that the Eggman bots always had a very obvious weak point.

...Yeah, Eggman was always going to be an idiot.

Shadow zipped forward and bounced up the right arm and landed on the shoulder. The mech swiveled in response, trying to shake him off. He rolled his eyes as he kept his balance on the shoulder pauldron. That was a terrible attempt to get rid of him.

He kicked the orange spot as hard he could, listening to it crack beneath his foot. The eggman bot actively shrieked beneath his attack, one of its fist almost hitting Tails as the fox whizzed passed the fist. Shadow grimaced.

"Are you okay?" He called out to Tails. Shadow dug his hands onto the pauldron as Tails zipped up next to Shadow and landed on the bot's head.

Tails snickered. "Yes, I'm good. What about you?" He shot back.

Shadow rolled his eyes and kicked the orange spot again. "I'm fine," He said. And he was--he just didn't like how this thing kept trying to knock him off.

The mech shook as Tails nodded. "Yeah, gotcha. I'll keep trying to distract it!" He dive bombed the mech's legs, throwing his ring bombs at them. They exploded and caused the mech to stumble again.

Taking his chance, Shadow swung around and kicked the spot one final time. The attack didn't seem to knock it flat and he glanced down at the band on his arm. There was a glowing bar on it; half of it was gone. Was it some sort of life bar for the mech?

He stumbled as the mech moved again. Shadow reached for the edge of the pauldron but--his fingers missed and he fell back from the mech. Well, damn. If he just summoned some chaos energy, he could save himself with a chaos control--

Someone or something grabbed his hands.

Shadow's body jolted as his fall was terminated and he was pulled up towards the sky. "What--" He managed to get out as he lifted his legs to avoid a swipe from the mech.

"Hey, Shadow," Tails said above him, "You looked like you needed a hand."

He looked up to see Tails, his twin tails whirling as he pulled Shadow up and up into the sky. So Tails was the one who had saved him. "Have you spotted any weak spots anywhere else?" Shadow asked in lieu of a thank you.

Tails descended to zip around the mech's back. "No--But the back of the legs are almost always a good spot." He swept back and said, "I'll throw you?"

"Yes." Shadow pulled his legs up as Tails started swinging him back and forth. Before he could ask what he was doing, Tails let Shadow's hands go.

Instinctively, he curled up and tumbled through the air. He didn't know which way he was falling--not until he felt himself ram into something hard beneath him. Shadow uncurled and scrambled for a good grip.

He grimaced as he managed to get a grip on some holes; holes from his quiells, Shadow realized. "Tails!" He called out.

As if his call had summoned him, Tails was zipping around to him. So too was the mech, as its leg trembled under Shadow's hands. Without thinking, he let go of his grip as machinery got too close to his fingers. Tails' hands grabbed his wrists and jerked him back up into the air.

At the same moment, the mech came crashing down. Shadow observed it from the sky as he and Tails circled around its collapsed form. The bar on the band flickered as it lowered: Almost the entirety of the bar was gone, which meant that it was, hopefully, almost defeated.

"Throw me at the other knee!" Shadow yelled over the screeching metal as the mech tried to stand up again.

Tails nodded and started swinging Shadow again. Lifting his legs up, Shadow waited until Tails let out a shout of 'now!' to curl up. He spun through the air and uncurled just in time to catch a grip on the back of the undamaged knee.

He reached back with one hand and summoned chaos energy from the emerald; forming it into a chaos spear. Shadow kicked back and up, throwing it at the back of the knee. The explosion from the impact caused Shadow to tumble through the air, unmoored.

For the third time, Tails caught him. "I think it's done," Tails said as the mech shuddered and attempted to pick itself up. In the end it ended up stumbling back, one of its feet sliding off the edge of the platform.

They both watched at the mech vanished into the darkness over the edge.

"Okay, yeah, it's done." Tails laughed wryly as he and shadow descended back down to the platform's surface. He let Shadow down before landing himself, fiddling with his band.

Shadow glanced down at his own band, noting the now fully empty bar. It was definitely tired to the mech's destruction then. He pulled his own band off and handed it off to Tails before the fox even asked for it.

Nodding to him, Tails placed the two bands in their places as the chimes went off. Shadow rolled his shoulders as the stand retracted into the platform. At least this was finally over, he thought as the chimes faded out. The robotic voice did not speak up, this time, as the ring canister popped out.

Catching the canister from midair, Tails said, "It’s got five thousand in it. Do you want to split it?" He glanced up at Shadow.

He shrugged. "Why not. It'd be a good shield for fighting the Black Arms." Chaos knew that while most of the black arms weren't too strong, there were a few here and there that could do some real damage. Having the protection afforded by the rings was always a good idea.

Laughing, Tails broke the canister between them. "You always seem to be thinking about stuff like that, you know," He said as he absorbed his rings.

"Is that a bad thing?" Shadow asked with a raised eyebrow.

Tails shook his head as he let the remains of the canister go. "No, I guess not. But..." He trailed off and turned away from Shadow. "Let's head back to the Tornado!"

Shadow frowned at Tails' back, wondering what the fox had meant to say instead. He doubted he'd get the answer if he asked so he'd let it go. Either way, he didn't think he should return to the Tornado. Shadow had to find the Black Arms right now, not back track.

"I have to go after the Black Arms, Tails," Shadow said, "I can't go back to the Tornado."

He turned to look at Shadow over his shoulder. "Why not?" Tails asked.

Where to start, besides the obvious? Shadow sighed. "I have to catch up to the Black Arms. I don't know where they are now and if I'm going to find them, I need to head out now." Or else they may elude him entirely.

Somehow that seemed to just make Tails laugh. "Well, yeah! It'd be easier to find them by using the GUN radio, right? They would be the type to chase them too." Tails tapped his feet as he crossed his arms at Shadow.

Well, that felt like an unnecessary comparison.

"...Alright, fine. You win. I'll come back with you." Shadow shook out his hands before following Tails back towards the fifth platform. There seemed to be another grind rail system back in that direction, which was lucky: Shadow might've just grabbed Tails and teleported if there hadn't been.

As it was, it only took a few minutes to arrive on the platform. It was as dull and lifeless as before. In fact, the whole ship seemed to be slowly losing power and consequently altitude. Had the engines failed without the rings to power them?

Tails sighed. "Looks like Eggman forgot to put in a different system to power the engines again," He said, unknowingly answering his thought.

With a snort, Shadow tilted his chin down. "He doesn't seem to have quite enough back ups, does he." You take out even one system in any of Eggman's ships or bases, and the whole place would fall apart. It's not very good for a long term system.

"Yeah, it's a little surprising. He used to have a bunch of back up systems that would kick in if the primary systems back fired." Tails ruffled his bangs.

Shadow nodded along before he said, "Will the Tornado be alright if this ship crashes?"

Judging by his surprised expression, Tails hadn't thought of that whatsoever. He sprinted passed Shadow towards the crash site of his plane. Shadow shook his head before jogging after him. Once he caught up tot Tails, he spotted the younger fiddling with the engine of the Tornado.

He leaned on the part of the plane that wasn't damaged. "Is everything alright?" Shadow asked. If Tails was ready to go, Shadow would gladly leave and continue his chase.

"I just need to replace a couple things and I'll be able to fly the Tornado back to my workshop." Tails glanced up at Shadow's placid expression. "Do you want me to hack GUN's radio signals? So you can chase the Black Arms?"

Tails seemed almost eager to do exactly that. Shadow raised an eyebrow at him. "If it helps me find the Black Arms faster, than yes," Shadow said.

Giving Shadow a thumbs up, Tails burrowed into the plane's innards. Shadow turned around and leaned his back against the plane's frame. The stars above them twinkled, finally visible thanks to the lack of lights from the carnival ship.

He closed his eyes in thought. The Black Arms...they're definitely from another planet. But how had they gotten here? Shadow wasn't dumb enough to believe that every civilization in the universe had the same level of space travel. However...

There wasn't a ship. The only thing that had come near Gaia was the Starburst Comet. Which, come to think of it, he hadn't seen a sign of it whatsoever in the past twenty four hours.

A crackle. "--Invaders in the Greenrest Ruins, at the coordinates of--" A voice spoke through the crackle and Shadow turned around, startled by the new sound.

Tails laughed nervously. "Sorry. Should've warned you--I got the radio connection up!" He pulled himself out of the Tornado's innards. "Okay. The Tornado is almost fixed--I just need to fix the paneling on the engines and I can go. What about you?"

Shadow raised an eyebrow. "I can Chaos Control to those ruins." They had mentioned invaders, whihc probably meant the Black Arms. If not...well, Shadow would figure it out.

For a moment, Shadow thought Tails would argue. His expression rapidly went through several different emotions before he sighed. "Okay," Tails said, "You'll be careful, right?"

"Yes, I will." Shadow stepped back from the Tornado and pulled his chaos emerald free. Tails pulled himself free and stood up, only wave goodbye to Shadow with a shy smile.

He almost wanted to tell Tails that he'd stay until the fox had taken off: Yet he stopped himself. Tails might be young but he didn't need Shadow to baby him. That's what Sonic was for, as Tails' older brother.

Shadow nodded once to Tails before raising his chaos emerald and shifted, thinking of the coordinates he'd picked up from the radio. Keep them in mind...and then... "Chaos Control!" Shadow yelled.

Chaos flooded around him and he hit stone. The smell of grass, jungle musk, and old stone hit his nose. He let out a breath: Alright, Shadow had arrived in Greenrest Ruins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so like. i genuinely wasn't certain if i wanted to write this stage! out of all of them this one felt really out of place: the black arms don't seem to have much of a presence, which makes me wonder if the black arms were always a thing with shth.
> 
> i couldn't pass up on setting up my friendship agenda though, so here's some shadow and tails friendship for yall. i like to think they're both chaotic yet calm in that shadow calmly encourages tails to continually make more and more insane contraptions.


	7. u; desolate prison

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta`d
> 
> :' ) please take this offering

Industrial rot and jungle musk mingled together as Umber stumbled out onto his new destination. The smell was overwhelming and he covered his mouth: Where in the name of Chaos was he?

Umber let his gaze linger across the green rivers and twisted metal. It looked like some sort of base that had been blown from within. It wasn't just any other base either: Despite the soot and ash, he could still see GUN sigils scattered across the base's corpse.

Where _was_ this place?

As far as he knew, there was no place like this that he knew of. Umber knew that didn't mean much: He had a grand total of six-ish months of life to call his own. That was hardly any time to learn anything about the world. Yet he'd hope that someone would've told him if a GUN base had been blown to smithereens in the past year.

He supposed he was wrong about that.

Umber huffed to himself and fiddled with his chaos emerald. Maybe he should just leave? There didn't seem to be anything of interest here for him. Unless...he closed his eyes and focused again. Just like when he had been pulled across the ruins and through Westopolis, there was something here.

The last two had ended up being chaos emeralds.

He pursed his lips as he stepped forward. Maybe...he should just check it out? Just in case there was something of interest in this place. Umber tapped the tip of his shoe on the ground before he headed further into the musty ruins.

Yeah, let's go. His skates buzzed to life and he dashed across the jungle corpse of the base. The streams that had to have once been clear jungle streams were acidic green, glowing as they trailed through the darkness.

Umber carefully maneuvered away from the edges of the green streams. Falling into those streams didn't seem like a good idea: He'd probably grow another arm or something even worse.

As he slowed to a stop, Umber noted that he could see GUN robots through the gaps of the jungle trees and ruined buildings. He wasn't close enough to see what state they were in but Umber didn't want to get close enough to find out. Umber doubted they would be all that friendly to him, as they were programmed to destroy all intruders.

(Or so he assumed.)

What did draw his attention away from the GUN robots was the small form of a bee mobian descending from above. Whoever they were, they seemed intent on something. What they could be looking for besides the chaos emerald, Umber didn't know.

...He should head them off, Umber decided. He would likely run into them anyway, so it was better for it to happen when he was in control then not. That being said...

Umber probably shouldn't have leapt up and grab their leg to do that. Either way, he thought as the two of them rapidly descended back to the ground, it worked. His skates hit the ground first and he let the bee go.

"Uuuugh." The bee's voice was high pitched as they spoke. "Why the heck did you do that??"

Stepping away from the bee, Umber crossed his arms. "You would've alerted the GUN robots," He said. Which wasn't entirely a lie: The bee probably would've done just that.

The bee pouted at him as they fluttered around them. "No, I wouldn't. I'm good at sneaking you know!" The bee adjusted their orange helmet with a loud huff.

Oh, yeah they sure were. That's why they were so loud, because they were so good at sneaking. "Sure, you are." Umber echoed his own thought.

They huffed and crossed their arms, turning their back to him. Umber rolled his eyes when their gaze wasn't on him: Was this bee a kid or something? Why were they even here?

He snorted and said, "Why're you here anyway? This place doesn't have anything." Except, again, for the chaos emerald, but that was his hunt, not this bee's.

"Huh? I'm looking for some data floppy disks. I can't believe they still used floppy disks here...." The bee muttered to themself.

That...well, Umber didn't care. If they were here for that instead of the chaos emerald, he didn't have any reason to get in their way. "Good luck then." Umber drawled, turning away from the bee with the intention to head along the pull further into the jungle.

The bee latched onto his arm. "Wait, no!" They yelped. "This place is freaky!! You can't leave me alone, uh--what's your name??"

Umber sighed. He felt like he'd already done this once today. "Umber. And you are." It was not a question; it was a demand.

Now that the bee seemed to get that.

"I'm Charmy Bee!" They chirped. "I'm part of the Choatix--We're the detective boys!"

Detective...boys?

Charmy sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. "Ehehe, forget that part! Espio hates it when I call the Chaotix that." He nervously laughed.

Umber raised an eyebrow with the flattest expression possible. Charmy sweated under the intense gaze before he buried his face in his hands. "P-please stop?" Charmy whimpered.

With a roll of his eyes, Umber turned his back on Charmy. He had a goal and Umber wasn't going to abandoned it here. Now, which path could he take...It’s not like he had much of an idea how this place was set up to start with.

...Granted, it probably didn't look like that anymore.

Charmy buzzed behind him with a wail. "Nooo, come back! You can't leave me alone!!" The bee jumped at him and Umber neatly dodged the tackle.

He pinched the bridge of his nose: Charmy was probably going to follow him around regardless of how Umber himself felt about it. Perhaps it might be better to make a deal with Charmy to keep him quiet.

"I'll make you a deal," He said. Umber gained Charmy's attention as he rubbed his abused noise.

Tilting his head, Charmy fluttered back into the air. "What sort of deal?" He asked.

Umber turned his gaze up to meet the bee's. "I'll let you keep up with me if you keep quiet," He said.

Charmy perked up, clapping. "Okay!! I can do that!," Charmy said, loudly.

Yeah, sure. Umber rolled his eyes before he returned to the trek further down into the ruined metal structure. He ducked under broken steel beams forming an arch. Just beyond it were metal paneled flooring, with more broken walls tossed across it.

There wasn't any other ways into this path. Whether that was good or bad remained to be seen but Umber didn't much care. If he needed to, he could just leap over the river to one side, or climb up the other side of ruined rock cliffs.

He brought a hand to his forehead with a light sigh before shaking his head. Right. Umber reached up and grabbed Charmy's arm as the bee bounced into view.

"Eeeh, what's up?" Charmy asked, antennae twitching.

Umber jerked his chin towards a half collapsed bot near the end of their path. It didn't seem like it was active but was more interesting was the broken remains of a server next to it. Perhaps one of those floppies Charmy was looking for was there.

Charmy seemed to have the same idea. He hesitantly approached the bot before poking around the server next to it. He let out a soft cry of delight as he snatched something from within the remains of the server. "I found one."

Sighing, Umber said, "That's wonderful. Can we go now?" He wanted to keep moving because who knew what would happen if they didn't. Hell, if they were unlucky than the bot just ahead of them would suddenly turn back on.

...He almost expected it to do so just to prove him right. Fortunately, it didn't move. Umber walked past both Charmy and the collapsed bot and fired up his rockets.

While he might not move as naturally fast as Sonic or Shadow, Umber's reflexes were almost as good. Good reflexes were sometimes far more important than one's actual speed. After all, what did it matter how fast you were when you tripped over and a root and broke your leg in the process?

(Of course that saved them, in the end.)

As they traveled down a river of a toxic green liquid, Umber had to snatch Charmy out of the air twice. The first, because a half broken air drone tried to snipe him out of the air. And the second?

A Black Arms, leaping down from above.

Umber knew he was technically meant to be on their side--yet he could barely bring himself to care. Eclipse, perhaps he could side with, but the other black arms just...they were so terribly blank.

For all that Charmy was a bit obnoxious, he was still a child. A child he wasn't keen on watching die while on his watch. Chaos, Umber thought, what was his problem? Before he wouldn't have given a damn. For some reason, now, he doesn't really want to see a kid die.

He frowned as he reached forward and snagged the back of Charmy's vest to pull him back. There had to be some reason for it, right? Especially as every child before Charmy he'd met had been scarily competent. Though perhaps that was giving Charmy little credit.

Just because he was a bit scatterbrained didn't make him an idiot.

Sighing, Umber dropped down to dry land. Charmy yelped as he dropped down next to Umber, landing on his rump. "Ugh, this place sucks. How am I supposed to find the right data archives here??" He crossed his arms with a huff.

"Just keep an eye out for them," Umber said with a drawl. He tilted his chin down towards the bee before jerking towards several more of the ruined data archives peeking out from a broken wall.

Charmy let out an incomprehensible sound and dove for the archives. Umber on the other hand, began his search for the next path forward. This place just seemed like a dead end.

Umber let out a sharp sigh and pushed a beam aside. On the other side were collapsed walls, with no way past. Route one was a bust--time to check out route two. 

Edging around Charmy and his excited scavenging, Umber peered through the next set of collapsed beams. There was a small opening, just large enough for either Umber himself, or Charmy. If the bee decided to keep following him that was.

He pushed one of the beams out of the way and eyeballed the last one. It supporting a piece of debris that, if it fell wrong, would block the hole through the other beams. So how would he move this one...?

"Do you need help?" Charmy's voice chirped right into his ear.

Umber jolted and swung an elbow behind him. Charmy yelped as he dodged. "Don't. Do that." He snapped.

Charmy pouted at him before cheering up. "Anyway, like I said, do you need help??" He pointed up at the debris on the top of the beams.

Looking up at the debris again himself, Umber frowned. It would make it easier to stop it from blocking the way through. And yet something about asking someone else for help left a bad taste in Umber's mouth.

"I can handle it." He declared.

He gave Umber a judging stare. Umber stared back at Charmy, unwilling to back down. He wasn't a child--and he realized the irony of that thoughts. Umber might not be a child, after all, but Charmy was.

Umber narrowed his eyes at Charmy. "Shouldn't you keep looking for your archives?" Or whatever it was he was searching for.

"I need a couple more but they aren't here! so I have to keep going too," Charmy said with a shrug.

Wonderful. This child was going to keeep following him around this place. That was not what he had been expecting when he got there.

...Granted, he hadn't really been expecting anything at all.

He pulled his attention away from the bee and instead focused it on the crossed beams. He slowly pulled one of the beams away, hyper aware of the debris swaing above his head. All it would take was a single mistake to drop it on his head.

Almost as if in response to that thought, Charmy was there by the debris and pushign it both away from the hole and away from Umber. Gritting his teeth, Umber finished pushing the beams aside.

Against his wishes, Charmy finished pushing the debris in the opposite direction of both Umber's goal and Umber himself.

Umber scowled up at the bee. "I told you no," He said.

"You didn't say no! You just said you could handle it." Charmy smugly flew through the hole, disappearing into the darkness of the base ruins.

Ugh. Kids. Why did the rest of his team trust him to do this on his own? In fact, why did the rest of his team let him go out on his own? Umber thought people were more protective of their kids than to let them to go to old ruined military bases.

Alone, at that.

He sighed and forced himself to make his way through the hole himself, spotting the bee hovering somewhere up on a second floor. Umber watched as Charmy disappeared inside the halls and he let out a sigh. Well, he was on his own at last.

Umber walked into the hallways beneath the section of ruins Charmy had entered. If he ran into the bee again later, then so be it, but he wasn't going to searching for him. That kid wasn't his responsibility.

So why did he feel guilty? Umber frowned to himself as he placed one hand on the rusted interior. Charmy really wasn't his responsibility so he shouldn't feel guilty leaving him alone.

Maybe he should go look for him, instead of wandering around trying to find the chaos emerald on his own.

Turning on his heel, Umber made to leave the way he came. He was interrupted by the sound of reality warping. He spun on his heel to meet whatever it was that had warped reality.

To his surprise, the one behind him looked like a black arms--but not one he'd seen before. They seemed like a strange combination of the foot soldiers Umber had fought and Black Doom. They definitely lacked legs like Black Doom did, in any case.

"Ah, there you are," They said, "I've been searching for you since Eclipse reported that you'd gone missing."

...Eclipse, huh. Hadn't he told Umber he was going to tell Black Doom that he had 'done well?' That was likely the only reason this guys wasn't trying to gut him like a fish.

He tilted his chin towards them. "And you are?" Umber asked coolly.

They didn't seem offended by Umber's wary skepticism. In fact, they seemed pleased. "Oh, only taking orders from Lord Doom and your brother? Good, that's good. I am Black Death, of course, one of Lord Doom's general." 

That was perhaps the edgiest name Umber had ever heard. Rouge would be dying of laughter right about now. "Why have you been searching for me, General...Death?" That was such a terrible title and name.

"Ah, you see, Lord Doom has gone to attend to matters elsewhere in the Empire. Myself and Eclipse shall continue our original missions: Eclipse was the one whom made me aware of your missing status." Black Death explained.

Umber wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. The knowledge that there was an entire empire run by Black Doom left him...very nervous and worried. What had been stopping him from just dropping the entire empire on Gaia?

Was it just because of Shadow?

Keeping his gaze on Black Death, Umber said, "So what exactly is it that you want me to do?"

"That is simple. GUN of Gaia is currently trying to recover some information from this location." Black Death turned away from, floating down the hall.

He raised an eyebrow before following. "And what does that mean for me?" Umber asked.

Black Death waved a hand out of one of the holes in the ruined base. "They hired a third party to retrieve the information. I am uncertain as to their identity, but I do know that there's someone here searching for information."

Charmy.

It wasn't hard to figure that out: Charmy was a third party, uninvolved with GUN. He was also searching for some floppy disks with information on it. Charmy being Black Death's target was the obvious answer.

But that meant Umber couldn't go and find him.

Umber didn't really want to fight the Black Arms here. He also didn't really want to harm a kid. That left him with one option: Lie through his teeth.

"Fine. I'll search," Umber said, walking past Black Death.

Black Death turned to follow his movement. "I expect to see you back at the Sky Centership." Umber turned around, confused about what this Sky Centership was supposed to be. Except....well, Black Death was gone.

Alright then. Umber crossed his arms. Back? At the Sky Centership? Was he talking about those ruins that Eclipse brought back to life?

He let out a sigh. Regardless, his main goal was still to track down the emerald. If Black Death did have anyone following him, he'd lead them on a merry chase around the ruins.

Heading through the rest of the hallways, Umber flipped over another broken support blocking the way out. Ahead of him was a path that overlooked a deep abyss, distant green lights shimmering below.

Umber wondered what was down there. Probably more ruins--or even just more irradiated sludge water. That was the only thing he could think to call the green rivers coursing through the ruins, after all.

He sighed and ran a hand through his quills. Just keep moving until he hit the place he had sensed the chaos emerald in. Umber would just have to search the rumble when he found it.

So he descended deeper into the ruins.

There wasn't much to say, about this trip deeper in. On occasion he thought he could hear Charmy's yelling in delight from somewhere nearby: He never put much effort in trying to track him down when he did hear him.

Sometimes he'd run across a breaking down GUN bot, but they were quickly dispatched. Honestly, Umber didn't think they'd be a threat even if they weren’t beaten to hell and back. If a mobian could take these things out in a second, then the war-like black arms would destroy them instantly.

...that explained why Westopolis fell so easily.

He leapt forward onto a fallen railing. It led him down closer to the glowing green sludge water--but also closer to the chaos emerald he could still sense, just out of reach. Umber kicked off the end and landed in a roll along the cliff side.

Oh, yeah, the chaos emerald was definitely down here somewhere. He wasn't entirely sure if this path would take him directly to the emerald, but it was better than not having a direction at all. Umber kicked his shoes on and raced forward down the path.

The entirety of the trip was a fairly easy: Very few people would think to guard a ruin like this. What was there was broken or barely functioning--and Umber didn't much worry about the Black Arms that were there.

Umber let out a huff as he continued his way forward. He just needed to find the proper way down. Which...was not down the glowing green ravine. Becoming irradiated was not on his list of things to do today.

Ah, a rail. He slowed down.

Why were there so many broken rails here? Were they former support beams?

He sighed. Whatever, he could worry about it some other time. Likely during a time when he wasn't on the clock. Umber took a step back before kicking off again and landing on the rail. He grinded down the rail, the wind refreshing against his face.

The end of the rail was fast approaching, lit up from beneath the green sludge water. Umber knelt down and kicked off the end. HE landed with a slight twirl, the rockets on his shoes flaring as he slowed to a stop.

Umber now stood in an empty hallway, or at least what used to be one. Half of it had been blasted out by whatever had destroyed this place. Quite frankly, it was clear that most of the area here was inaccessible.

Cursing under his breath, Umber headed to the one opening he could find. A doorway, half blasted open from the outside. It did not look like he had been destroyed at the same time as the rest of the area.

He wondered when that had happened.

Stepping inside, he started hacking and coughing. Why was there so much dust and ash in here?? Umber rubbed at his mouth in disgust before he continued another look around the room.

A broken pilot operated GUN bot was crashed in a far corner. One of the walls had broken apart on top of it, crushing the back half entirely.

However, the most interesting thing in this room was the center. It was perhaps the most undamaged area in the room, with an open pod raised from the center. A dead computer terminal sat before the pod.

Umber's brow furrowed as he approached the center. He couldn't see the glow of a chaos emerald anywhere around him, but he could clearly sense that it was somewhere in this room. Perhaps it had fallen into the pod?

Hefting himself up to the pod, Umber noticed two things. First, this was most definitely not the where the emerald was. Second, he saw the words Project Shadow printed across the side of the pod in deeply faded yellow text.

It was almost enough to make him fall out of the pod.

He caught himself on the edge of the pod, his gaze snapping down towards the bottom of the literal hole they had apparently stored the pod in. Which was messed up but--Umber's thoughts on the matter were derailed by the glow below him.

There was a chaos emerald, nestled between the wires. The purple glow hurt his eyes and he grimaced. Umber almost rubbed at his eyes before he realized he might just end up dead. It was a long way down if her lost his grip.

Umber let out a long breath before he shifted and let go of the pod. He landed in a roll among the dust and wires, coughing sharply at the dust cloud that was tossed into the air around him. Gross. He was going to have so much dust in his fur...

Rubbing at his face, Umber began to blindly search for the emerald. His fingers got caught in the wires and he grimaced, pulling his hand back. There was no power going through those wires yet he still felt wary of getting tangled in them.

He squinted through the darkness and dust before he spotted the purple glow once more. Umber let out a sigh of relief, He snatched the emerald from its nest among the wires, his hand flashing up to the other two emeralds he'd collected.

This made three of seven.

Perhaps...Umber looked up at the pod. Was Shadow collecting the emeralds for the Black Arms? It didn't sound like him to do so: Plus, Eclipse's comments made it sound as if Shadow was going directly against the Black Arms instead of simply...going around them like Umber was.

He wondered if Shadow was trying to be a hero or if he was just doing what he thought was right.

Umber wondered, again, if perhaps he should've actually talked to Shadow. He immediately wrinkled his nose at the thought. No, talking to Shadow wouldn't have done anything. Umber wasn't even sure why he'd thought of it: What had that thought even meant?

What would talking to Shadow actually change?

(Maybe, just maybe, it was because he had for a the briefest of seconds the thought that maybe Shadow understood. Understood what it meant to be a weapon or a tool for others. That maybe he understood what it felt like to remember nothing about yourself.

But the thought had come and gone in a split second.)

Clambering out of the hole, Umber glanced out to the doorway. He wondered, for a moment, how Charmy was. If the little bee had gotten away from the Black Arms unharmed.

He let the thought go. The kid was smart: Umber would just have to trust that he got out on his own.

Unfortunately for Umber, he needed to fulfill that stupid request of...Black Death? Yeah, the request of Black Death to return to those ruins. He may have avoided the request to track Charmy down, but he couldn't ignore that one, not if he wanted to stay neutral.

His fingers tightened around the purple emerald as he cast the room around him one last long look. Umber decided then, as he raised the emerald, that he didn't much like this room. It reminded him far too much of the room Rouge had found him in, months ago.

"Chaos Control!" He called out, the energy washing over him like a wave. Umber closed his eyes and savored the moment up until he felt wind buffet his face.

Umber's eyes snapped back open.

The ruins were no longer half buried within the earth of Gaia: Now, they were high in the blue, blue sky.

"What." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yall i am so tired; i am happy to get a chapter for one of my fics out tho.
> 
> ....wow i genuinely didn't realize i didn't use any linebreak this time lmao


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